Aftimios Ofiesh, born Abdullah Ofiesh, was an early 20th-century Eastern Orthodox bishop in the United States, serving as the immediate successor to St. Raphael of Brooklyn under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church. He held the title Bishop of Brooklyn from 1917 to April 1933, founded and led the American Orthodox Catholic Church for six years, and is, perhaps, best known as being the source of various lines of succession of episcopi vagantes.
Aftimios Ofiesh
American Orthodox Catholic Church
The American Orthodox Catholic Church (AOCC), or The Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church in North America (THEOCACNA), and sometimes simply the American Orthodox Patriarchate (AOP), was an independent Eastern Orthodox Christian church with origins from 1924–1927. The church was formally created on February 2, 1927 and chartered in the U.S. state of Massachusetts in 1928 with the assistance of Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky of New York; the American Orthodox Catholic Church was initially led by Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh before his disputed suspension and deposition in 1933.
Bishop Aftimios Ofiesh (second right) with the 1921 pan-Orthodox gathering of bishops
Aftimios Ofiesh in 1922