Catholicos of All Armenians Vazgen I today would turn 108

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Catholicos Vazgen I (name Levon Garabed Baljian) today would turn 108 years old.

He is the 130th Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Vazgen was born inBucharestto a family belonging to theArmenian-Romanian community. His father was a shoemaker and his mother was a schoolteacher. The young Levon Baljian did not initially pursue the Church as a profession, instead graduating from theUniversity of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. After graduation, he became a philosopher and published a series of scholarly articles.

As his interests began to shift from philosophy to theology, Baljian studied Armenian Apostolic Theology and Divinity inAthens, Greece. He eventually gained the title ofvardapet, an ecclesiastical rank for learned preachers and teachers in the Armenian Apostolic Church roughly equivalent to receiving a doctorate in theology. In the 1940s, he became a bishop, and then theleader of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Romania.

His rise through the hierarchy of the Church culminated in 1955 when he was elected Catholicos, becoming one of the youngest Catholicos in the history of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He would reign until his death in 1994.

From then on, he was very busy renewing ancient Armenian churches and reviving institutions of the church. He saved a number of church treasures by establishing theAlex Manoogian Museum of the Mother Church. Vazgen intensified contacts with theArmenian Catholic Church, with the aim of reuniting both wings of Armenian Christianity.

He died on August 18, 1994 after suffering from a long-term illness.

Biography according to Wikipedia free encyclopedia