Italo-Greek Orthodox Church

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The Italo-Greek Orthodox Church or Italo-Byzantine Orthodox Church is an independent group of churches in North America following a Greek Orthodox style of worship but with no canonical or sacramental ties to the mainstream Eastern Orthodox Church. It is not to be confused with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy, a diocese of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople. It claims a following of 3,000 people spread across two parishes.[1]

In the United States, Sicilian immigrants of Orthodox faith organized the first community in 1902 in Philadelphia, PA. From that first parish, the Church has grown into what today is known as the Italo-Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of the Americas and Canada, with 14 communities, headquartered in Utica, NY, and serving Italo-Greek Orthodox Christians in the USA, Canada and North and South America. Today, the Italo-Greek Orthodox Church in the Americas and Canada, after more than twenty years without hierarchy and clergy, is experiencing rebirth and steady growth. It presently has one bishop, four priests and two deacons.

The work of the Italo-Greek Orthodox Church in the Americas, Canada, Sicily and Italy is exclusively directed to people of Sicilian and Italian descent, thereby maintaining its historical mission as being the indigenous local Orthodox Church of the Sicilian and Italian people. Services are celebrated in Italian and/or English. The Church follows the Church (Julian) Calendar. Clergy are either married or monastic but the practice of ordaining celibate non-monastic priests has recently been introduced, since not all men are called to be monastics or married. Bishops are taken only from among the monastic or celibate clergy.