Carmel Henry Carfora

Carmel Henry Carfora, who was raised as a Roman Catholic in Naples, Italy, was a cofounder and leader of the [[North American Old Roman Catholic Church (NAORCC). In 1895 he entered the Order of Friars Minor. He became a priest in 1901, at the age of 23, at which time he was sent to the United States. His assigned task was to serve as a missionary to Italian immigrants in New York. He later (1906) served in West Virginia. In 1908, however, he ran into conflict with the Apostolic Delegate and decided to break with Rome.

Carfora formed mission bodies from sympathetic followers, and in June of 1912 he incorporated his work as the National Catholic Diocese in North America. Meanwhile he formed a relationship with Bishop Paolo Miraglia-Gulotti, leader of the Italian National Episcopal Church, who may have given Carfora his second ordination. In any case, it is certain that in 1916 Carfora received an ordination to the episcopacy at the hands of the Prince Rudolph Francis Edward de Landas Berghes, a bishop of Arnold Harris Mathew's Old Roman Catholic Church. In 1917 Landas Berghes and Carfora united their jurisdictions under a new name, North American Old Roman Catholic Diocese, centered in Chicago. When Landas Berghes returned to the Roman Church in 1919, Carfora assumed complete control of the group and renamed it the North American Old Roman Catholic Church.

Over the next several decades, Carfora built a following of as many as 50,000. He solidified his own position as papal in scope and authority, declaring in 1923 his title as "Most Illustrious Lord, the Supreme Primate." His creed was based on acceptance of pre-Vatican I Roman Catholic theology and practice, with the exception of allowing a married priesthood. His strategy for growth was to build congregations of first generation immigrants, consecrating at least thirty bishops to serve Polish, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Ukranian, Mexican, and most successfully, West Indian constituents.

This coalition gradually eroded in the 1950s with most of his bishops leaving for other jurisdictions. After looking into the possibility of merging with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Carfora decided against it. Thirty parishes decided to make that move anyway in 1952.

In his older years Carfora suffered from asthma and heart trouble, which slowed him down. During a stay in a Roman Catholic hospital in Texas in 1953, he was pressured by Roman Catholics to renounce his work, and his episcopal ring was stolen. Shortly thereafter he retired and was leader only in title until his death in 1958 at the age of 80. Although his church remains today as a small cluster of mostly West Indian parishes, Carfora's enduring, though largely unintended, legacy is rather the establishment, through his numerous episcopal consecrations, of many independent Catholic churches in the United States.

PERSONAL INFORMATION Religion: Old Catholic.

FURTHER READINGS Anson, Peter. Bishops at Large. London: Faber and Faber, 1964. 593 pp.

Carfora, Carmel Henry. Historical and Doctrinal Sketch of the Old Roman Catholic Church. Chicago, IL: The Author, 1950. 23 pp.

Melton, J. Gordon. Biographical Dictionary of American Cult and Sect Leaders. Garland Reference Library of Social Science, vol. 212. New York: Garland Publishing, 1986. Pruter, Karl, and J. Gordon Melton. The Old Catholic Sourcebook. New York: Garland Publishing Company, 1983. Trela, Jonathan. A History of the North American Old Roman Church. Scranton, PA: The Author, 1979. 124 pp.

SOURCE CITATION "Carmel Henry Carfora." Religious Leaders of America, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

Document Number: K1627500215