Armenian Church Leader, Pope Francis Meet at Vatican| National Catholic Register

The Armenian Church of Cilicia is in full communion with the Armenian Apostolic Church, which has over 5 million members worldwide.

For the primary time in 10 years, Pope Francis met Wednesday with His Holiness Aram I, the chief of the Armenian Church of Cilicia with jurisdiction over some 800,000 Armenian Christians in Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Iran, and Greece.

The assembly happened behind closed doorways within the Holy Father’s private workplace and the Vatican has not supplied any additional particulars. Pope Francis final met with Aram I on the Vatican in June 2014. On that event, the Holy Father thanked him for his dedication to reaching Christian unity and affirmed that the struggling of the Armenian martyrs have to be honored “like the injuries of the very physique of Christ.”

The Armenian Church of Cilicia

The Armenian Church of Cilicia is in full communion with the Armenian Apostolic Church, which has over 5 million members worldwide. Along with its presence within the referenced area, the Armenian Church of Cilicia has two dioceses and 34 parishes in the US, together with six parishes in Canada.

Whereas in full communion, the Armenian Church of Cilicia is administratively impartial of the Apostolic Church in Armenia. 

Armenia was the primary nation to undertake Christianity as its state faith when King Tiridates III was transformed to the Christian religion by St. Gregory the Illuminator in the beginning of the fourth century. In 506, an Armenian synod rejected the Christological teachings of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which no Armenian bishop attended.

From that point on, the Armenian Church proclaimed itself autonomous, beneath the jurisdiction of a patriarch who took the identify Catholicós, a title that was initially attributed to the pinnacle of a Christian group exterior the confines of the Roman Empire.

In December 1996, St. John Paul II and His Holiness the Catholicos of all Armenians Karekin II signed a joint declaration affirming the frequent origin of the Armenian Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

Who’s Aram I?

His Holiness Aram I used to be born in Beirut, Lebanon, and studied on the Armenian Theological Seminary of Antelias and on the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey (Geneva). He has been a Catholicos of the Armenian Church of Cilicia since 1995. 

Along with specializing in philosophy and historical past of the Church within the Center East, he’s the founding father of the Center East Council of Church buildings and in addition the founding father of the theological dialogue between the Byzantine Orthodox and Japanese Orthodox.