Catholicosate of Cilicia to Sue Turkey over Historic Headquarters in Sis

Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, said the Holy See was preparing to initiate legal claims against Turkey to regain ownership of the historic headquarters of the Catholicosate of Sis.

“The Armenian Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia will soon present its legal claims to Turkey’s Constitutional Court, demanding the return of its historic seat, the Sis Catholicosate, to its rightful owners—the Armenian Church and the Armenian people,” said His Holiness.

Aram I’s message was delivered before attendees of the fifth Armenia-Diaspora Pan-Armenian meeting at the Yerevan Opera House on Sept. 19, organized and hosted by Armenia’s Diaspora Ministry.

The Armenian Obsession with Churches

Raffi Bedrossyan

 



When someone visits Armenia for the first time, the tour itinerary invariably includes a multitude of churches and monasteries. Modern Armenia is the land of churches.

Historic Armenia in Anatolia was also a land of churches, with nearly 4000 churches and monasteries. The Van Lake region alone had over 300 churches. The ancient City of Ani, dubbed the City of 1001 Churches, contained 40 churches.

We are proud of our churches, awed at their architectural beauty and intricate construction techniques, amazed at their settings perched on inaccessible mountaintops.

The Compulsive Armenian

Kristi Rendahl

Within an hour of talking to me—nay, 15 minutes—people know something of my history with Armenia and Armenians. “Are you Armenian?” they ask with reasonable skepticism.

“No, but I lived there for five years,” I respond, “and I return almost every year.”

They wonder where Armenia is and whether I know the Kardashian family.

“It was a good fit for me,” I explain without being asked.

In reality, I’m compulsively Armenian in very select ways. You know how Armenians watch the credits at the end of every film, waiting to see an Armenian name, mentioning it aloud to friends or tucking it away for a future conversation? “Do you remember the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1971? Yeah, the assistant costume designer was Armenian.”

A Time to Act: What will become of Varak Monastery after the recent earthquake in Van?

Ara Sarafian 

Varak Monastery, near Van, was one of the great monastic centres of the Armenian church. Its main structure was built at the end of the 10th century. Much of the monastery was destroyed in 1915, a significant part was destroyed in the 1960s, while good sections have just barely survived until our days. In recent years, busloads of tourists have visited Varak as a place of historic interest. Many have been Armenian, but also Germans, Japanese, Italians and Americans. 

Karekin II to Barack Obama in 2009: "Unacceptable Situation" in Georgia

His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, in December 2009 wrote a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama alerting him to the continued abuses of religious and ethnic minorities in Georgia, a cable released on August 26, 2011 by the whistleblower site WikiLeaks revealed. In his letter, the Catholicos brought the “unacceptable situation” of religious minorities in Georgia to Obama’s attention, noting that the situation has worsened since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

An Armenian Church to Be Turned Into A Community Center in Jerusalem?

Once in a while we hear reports about the woes and problems faced by the dwindling Armenian community in Jerusalem, essentially because of the farfetched policies of the Israeli state. They do not seem to be exaggerated. A wonderful sample was Alistair Macdonald's dispatch for Reuters, dated June 29, 2010. Some paragraphs from the article are worthy to be quoted:

Armenian Day Schools: Some Random Thoughts

One can safely assume that the number of students in Armenian day and Saturday schools throughout the Eastern United States is pretty much smaller than that of Sunday schools students. A comparative and updated statistics remains to be done, but let us take this assumption, however well-grounded it might be, as a starting point to confront an old debate in the Armenian-American community: what is the source of Armenian identity in this community? Church or school?