ARMENIAN CATHOLICS IN GEORGIAN-ARMENIAN VILLAGE WANT A PRIEST

AKHALKALAKI, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS:Residents of the village of Sukhulis in Akhaltsikha region of southern Georgian province of Samtskhe-Javakheti have asked the leadership of the Armenian Catholic Church’s Ordinariate of Armenia, Georgia and Eastern Europe, seated in the Armenian Gyumri, to send a new priest. A local A-Info news agency said Father Grigor Mikaelian, a priest from the Mekhitarist Congregation, based in Venice, served for the village for years, but he had to leave since he had not been appointed officially. Some 10% of Armenians, both at home and overseas, are believed to belong to the Catholic communion. The first Patriarchate for Armenian Catholics was established in 1742 in Lebanon. Today the Patriarchate has two dioceses in Syria, ones in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Ukraine, France and Argentina. It has an Apostolic Exarchate for the United States and Canada, and Ordinaries in Greece, Romania and Eastern Europe (Armenia). The present Armenian Catholic Patriarch, elected by the synod of Armenian Catholic Bishops in 1999, is His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX, resident in Beirut, Lebanon. The present day communities of Armenian Catholics in Armenia and Georgia are the result of emigration in the 19th century after the pact between Russia and Turkey in 1829, when much of the Armenian population fleeing from disastrous conditions under the Ottoman Empire sought asylum under the Christian protection of the Russian Empire. They settled in the provinces of Shirak, Tashir and Lori (Armenia today) Javakheti (today’s Georgia) and Akhalkalaki, Bagdanovka-Ninodzminda. Many Armenian priests educated by the Mekhitarist Fathers (Armenian rite Benedictine monks), who settled in Venice in 1717 and Vienna in 1810, became famous bishops. But with the arrival of the Soviet regime, Armenian Catholics were persecuted. Between 1936-1939, under Stalin, about 40 priests were killed and many churches were destroyed or used for non-religious purposes. In 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, Pope John Paul II reconstructed the Catholic hierarchy of Armenia, appointing as Ordinary for Armenian Catholics in Eastern Europe (Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine and Russia), the Mekhitarist Father Nerses Der-Nersessian who was ordained titular Archbishop of Sebaste of the Armenians on 17 November 1992. The Armenian Catholic Church was officially registered in the country in 1992 with its own state recognized statutes. The official see of the Ordinariate is at Gyumri. A second official registration was made in 2000 with a new edition of the statutes. Catholic churches in the province of Shirak have been restored and operate in full legality, but many more, particularly in the Tashir and Ashotsk provinces, have yet to be restored. In many villages, churches will have to be rebuilt from the foundations. A most pressing problem is the formation of priests. In 1994 a minor seminary was opened at Gyumri, which today has about a dozen candidates for the priesthood. Major seminarians study philosophy and theology in Rome and live at the Pontifical Armenian College founded in 1883 by Pope Leo XIII.