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Italo-Greek Orthodox Church in the Americas and Canada

image located by Ned Smith

See also:

Orthodox church flags
Christian flags (index page)

A graphic labeled "flag" can be found at the webpage of the Italo-Greek Orthodox Church Archdiocese of the Americas and Canada. See http://www.igoarch.org/ and http://www.igoarch.org/sm_flag.jpg. The image shows a white cross throughout with a black outlined white fleur-de-lis in the center. The cross is fimbriated blue bordering the upper hoist canton, green bordering the upper fly, blue bordering the lower fly, and red bordering the lower hoist. The cantons themselves are (clockwise from upper hoist) white, red, white, gold. The upper hoist canton bears a gold Chi-Rho symbol, and the lower hoist has a different symbol, which I cannot really make out in the image, but which seems to be the symbol shown in larger scale at the top of http://www.igoarch.org/ - three heads of wheat and a cluster of grapes framed by its leaves.

Regarding the denomination, Wikipedia says: "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."

"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. ... 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."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo-Greek_Orthodox_Church

Ned Smith, 12 January 2007