The Armenian Catholic Church

Denomination·Founded 1742 CE·Figures vary widely by source and by whether the diaspora is counted by baptism or by practice; no single number is reliable enough to state here.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → The Eastern Catholic Churches → The Armenian Catholic Church

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Story of The Armenian Catholic Church

Bzommar, 1749.

Abraham Ardzivian, bishop of Aleppo, was elected patriarch by Catholic Armenian bishops in 1740 and confirmed by Benedict XIV in 1742; he had to leave Ottoman territory, and the patriarchal convent was founded at Bzommar in the Lebanese mountains in 1749. For most of a century the church existed mainly outside the empire whose Armenians it served.

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Where it is toldThe church's own history, and the archives at Bzommar
Who appearsAbraham Ardzivian, and the Armenian Catholics of Aleppo and Constantinople
What it teachesHow a second Armenian hierarchy came to exist, and at what cost to the first
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Ardzivian had been a Catholic bishop in Aleppo for years before his election; recognition by Rome exposed him to Ottoman pressure and he moved his see to Lebanon, then under a more tolerant local arrangement. The convent at Bzommar, founded in 1749, has been the church's intellectual centre ever since and holds a substantial manuscript collection. A second Armenian Catholic jurisdiction, an archbishopric in Constantinople, existed in parallel through the nineteenth century and the two were united in 1867. The see was in Constantinople until 1928 and has been in Beirut since.

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