Carmel Henry Carfora

Carmel Henry Carfora
Archbishop and Primate
Carfora in cope and miter with crozier (c. 1918)
In office	1919-1958
Predecessor	Rudolph de Landas Berghes et de Rache
Successor	Disputed
Orders
Ordination	1901
Consecration	October 4, 1916 by Rudolph de Landas Berghes et de Rache or Joseph Rene Vilatte
Personal details
Born	(1878-08-27)August 27, 1878 Naples, Italy
Died	January 11, 1958(1958-01-11) (aged 79) Chicago, Illinois, USA
Denomination	Old Roman Catholic Church
Motto	"For God and Humanity"
Coat of arms

Carmel Henry Carfora (August 27, 1878 – January 11, 1958), raised Roman Catholic in his native Naples, Italy, was a co-founder and leader of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church (NAORCC). Before leaving Roman Catholicism in favor of the Old Catholics in 1908 over a dispute with his ecclesiastical superiors, he had been ministering to Italian American immigrants, first in New York City, then in West Virginia, as a Capuchin Franciscan priest, having entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in 1895.

Carfora, along with a small group of parishioners, broke away from St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, in Youngstown, Ohio, and founded St. Rocco's Independent National Catholic Church on May 17, 1907, and later formed mission congregations which ministered to various ethnic immigrant groups whom he perceived as unable to gain adequate pastoral support from the Roman Catholic authorities. In June 1912 he incorporated his work as the National Catholic Diocese in North America, for a time under the episcopal oversight of Bishop Paolo Miraglia-Gulotti, leader of the Italian National Episcopal Church. Rudolph de Landas Berghes took up residence at St. Dunstan's Abbey, Waukegan, Illinois and raised Abbot William H. F. Brothers to the episcopacy on October 3, 1916. The following day he consecrated Carfora as a bishop of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church. St. Rocco's was disbanded until it was received into the Episcopal Church on June 15, 1918. In 1917 de Landas Berghes and Carfora united their jurisdictions, adopting the name "North American Old Roman Catholic Diocese" and established its headquarters in Chicago. When de Landas Berghes reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church in 1919, Carfora assumed the leadership of the group, which he renamed the "North American Old Roman Catholic Church".