(ACI MENA via CNA/Romy Haber, Souhail Lawand) — On Thursday, Sept. 12, the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate held a grand ceremony in Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square to welcome the remains of cardinal and patriarch Gregory Peter XV Agagianian from Rome. His body will be laid to rest in the Armenian Catholic Cathedral of St. Elias and St. Gregory the Illuminator in downtown Beirut.
Agagianian, known for his strong opposition to communist rule during the Cold War era, became a prominent figure in Catholic Church history. He was a leading candidate for the papacy on two occasions. The process of his beatification, a step toward sainthood in the Catholic Church, began in Rome on Oct. 28, 2022. [Read more here…]
Here are some quick facts about the servant of God:
- Born in a part of the Russian Empire that is now Georgia, Cardinal Agagianian was Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church from 1937 to 1962 and prefect of the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith from 1962 to 1970. Venerable Pius XII named Agagianian a cardinal when he was only 50. (CWN)
- His outstanding performance [at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome] was noted by Pope [Saint] Pius X, who told the young Agagianian: “You will be a priest, a bishop, and a patriarch.” (Wikipedia)
- Cardinal Agagianian’s cause for beatification was officially opened on October 28, 2022. It was around then, when his body was exhumed, that he was discovered to be incorrupt.
- In 1950 he issued a pastoral letter in which he directly appealed to all Armenians (most of whom adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church) to accept the authority of the Catholic Church. (Wikipedia)
- He was a staunch anti-communist, who called for a “heroically Christian” struggle against communism during his visit to Australia in 1959. Vilified by the Soviets and the then-Soviet controlled Armenian Apostolic newspaper, Etchmiadzin, he warned that Armenians in diaspora should avoid being repatriated to Soviet Armena so that they could keep their faith. Yet, he was wise enough to believe — according to a January 1958 diplomatic report Marcus Cheke, UK Ambassador to the Holy See — “that the best thing for the Western powers to do is to hang on, avoid war … and to wait for a transformation inside Russia, which he thinks will happen sooner or later.” In this he now seems prophetical for seeing through the cold-war era hysteria. (Wikipedia)
- Agagianian was a polyglot and renowned linguist. He was described as the College of Cardinals’ “top linguist” in 1953. He spoke fluent Armenian (his mother language), Russian, Italian, French, English, was proficient in Latin and Hebrew, had a reading knowledge of Arabic, and learned German, Spanish, classical Greek. He had “a working knowledge of the Slavic languages and could speak most of the languages of the Middle and Far East.” Healy noted that “his English is excellent, touched with an unidentifiable accent that probably owes something to all his other languages.” (Wikipedia)
- There is a considerable Armenian diaspora in Lebanon, occasioned by the 1915-16 Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Turks (readers may recall that Pope Francis recognized this genocide, to the chagrin of Turkish officials, on its centenary in 2015). The Armenian Patriarchate of Cilicia, the ecclesiastical center of the sui juris Armenian Catholic Church, has been located in Beirut since 1928. According to CNA, Cardinal Agagianian “acquired Lebanese citizenship after coming to the country as an apostolic visitor in 1935.”
The Armenian Catholic Church is one of the twenty-four sui juris churches within the Catholic Church. The largest of these is the Latin church; the twenty-three remaining churches are of the Eastern rites, of either Alexandrine, Antiochian, Byzantine, or Armenian origin. The Armenian rite is unique among these for being a genus with no other specific rites within it; it is, therefore, sui generis.
In her article, Crowns for Armenia, Sister Maria Philomena gives an overview of the Armenian Catholic Church, its history and saints.
