[3][4][5] On March 18, 1908, as a result of the Hudson Incident, Fan Noli was ordained as a priest by a Russian bishop in the United States.

[4][5][6] In March 1908, Noli thus led the first time in Albanian the Orthodox liturgy for the Albanian-American community.

[7] After World War II, following the controversies about Noli's status, and the political divergences of Albanian-Americans with the rise of Communism in Albania, Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, to send a canonical bishop, Mark (Lipa), who organized the diocese in 1949–1950 and accepted into it the considerable community in Chicago and an older parish, the first of three Albanian Orthodox parishes to locate in South Boston.

By October 1971, with the acceptance of Bishop Stephen and the Albanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America as a constituent diocese of the OCA, the canonical controversy was ended.

[8] On September 10, 2019, the OCA announced that Metropolitan Tikhon (Mollard) would be the locum tenens for the diocese until a successor was found.