Palestinian Orthodox Church of America (Palestinian Orthodox Archdiocese)
The Palestinian Orthodox Church of America, formerly called Catholic Church of the East, is led by Archbishop Melchisedeck of Pennsylvania (formerly known as the Roman Catholic Archbishop Ramzi Musallam), who was born in Palestine and educated in the United States, graduating from Notre Dame University. He became a Catholic priest and later archbishop in 2009, leading a very large group of Arabs in the eastern United States, as well as Nigerians in Africa, within the Catholic Church of the East. In 2015, Ramzi Musallam contacted Archbishop Gregory, desiring to join the Church. Archbishop Ramzi later came to Dormition Skete and was baptized with the name Andrew, renouncing his former heresy and expressing the desire to bring all of his people into the Orthodox Church. Archbishop Gregory assumed that he was being sincere but was not about to make him a bishop without testing Ramzi’s character. After a few days at the skete, Ramzi inadvertently revealed that he believes the grace of the Mysteries may be found outside the Church. When Vladyka Gregory contradicted and corrected him, Ramzi immediately changed his speech and said that he agreed with Vladyka and accepted the teaching of the Church. In further conversation with him, however, Archbishop Gregory surmised that this man had an immense desire to become a bishop, and when he told Ramzi that he was not going to ordain him a bishop, Ramzi left the Church and never came back.
Musallam next approached the apostate ROCOR that united with the Moscow Patriarchate, and they ordained him a priest on August 17, 2015. Later he went to a different church, that of the Avlona Synod (True Orthodox Church of the Patristic Calendar) of Greece, and on May 8, 2016, he was consecrated a bishop by the heretical Metropolitan Angelos, taking the new name of Archbishop Melchisedeck and changing the name of his church to the Palestinian Orthodox Church, Archdiocese of North America. Altogether, the illegitimate Avlona Synod and its sister synods in Germany, Russia, Greece, North America, South America, and Ukraine now comprise 63 bishops.
Archbishop Gregory Dormition Skete P.O. Box 3177 Buena Vista, CO 81211-3177 USA |
Contact: Archbishop Gregory
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