The Antiochian Orthodox followers were originally cared for by the Russian Orthodox Church in America and the first bishop consecrated in North America, Saint Raphael of Brooklyn, was consecrated by the Russian Orthodox Church in America in 1904 to care for the Syro-Levantine Greek Orthodox Christian Ottoman immigrants to the USA and Canada, who had come chiefly from the Vilayets of Adana, Aleppo, Beirut and Damascus (the birthplace of the community's founder St. Raphael of Brooklyn).