Quake Precipitates Joint Action : Leaders of Split Armenian Church Drawing Closer

International chieftains of the Armenian Church, once sharply at odds, say both the tribulation of the devastating earthquake and a joint trip to the United States strengthened the brotherly ties between them.

But in the church’s U.S. branch, strains of a prolonged split still showed. Tendencies also appeared on one side here to minimize the high-level calls to unity.

These were among the mingled imprints left by an unprecedented team visit last week of the two top Armenian prelates, Catholicos Vasken I of the mother see in Soviet Armenia and Catholicos Karekin II of the Cilician see in Lebanon.

Catholicos means universal church head, similar to Pope in Roman Catholicism. However, the Armenian Church, like Eastern Orthodoxy, uses more democratic procedures, such as election of local bishops.

The earthquake in Soviet Armenia had drawn the two church leaders together there, steadying that flock. Then their mutual trip here, to thank Americans for their help, raised a sign for peace to a divided U.S. church.

“Together we have agreed on taking certain steps toward cooperation, which is more important than disputes of the past,” said Vasken, the now inclusively acknowledged head of the church, based at Echmiadzin, Armenia.

“The situation is better,” he added in an interview. “We hope that unity of the divided church here will take place in due course.”

‘On the Right Track’

Karekin, interviewed later, said: “We’re on the right track. Closer collaboration will become a source of benefit to our people and our church.

“People are disheartened with the conflict. The polarization in the Armenian community has caused complications and duplications. It is my conviction and hope that with the new trend toward brotherly relationships, these disadvantages will gradually disappear.”

Both prelates are imposing figures in black cassocks and veiled hoods, their beards neatly trimmed. They carry gold-tipped staffs. The Bucharest-educated Vasken is 80, while Oxford-educated Karekin is a more vigorous 56.

Asked if the earthquake disaster had firmed up their relationship, Vasken said that this “naturally intensified it.” Paradoxically, good can come from tragedy, he said, and cited a Latin saying, which goes in translation:

“Through suffering you rise to the stars.”

On that question, Karekin said the earthquake “precipitated our coming together. We both felt the same as one in that moment of tragedy. Pain was the occasion. Love was the reason.”

The Armenian church dates from AD 301, when Christianity was officially established there as the first state church. About 2 million Armenians live there and 5 million more are dispersed around the world, including the United States.

Its approximately 700,000 Armenian church people are divided, about half and half by some estimates, between two wings of the church that have functioned separately for more than half a century.

That split came in 1933, mostly over complex political-social antagonisms resulting from the Echmiadzin see being under Soviet controls and being vacant part of the time.

Choose Alignment

One U.S. church wing, now headed by Archbishop Mesrop Ashjian, chose to be under the jurisdiction of the Cilician Catholicos, while the other wing, now led by Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, clung to Echmiadzin oversight.

Ancient invasions had driven the chief see out of Echmiadzin, and it was for centuries in Cilicia, which is now part of Turkey. The catholicos there retained that title when in 1441 a new catholicos was elected in Echmiadzin.

Friction between the two sharpened in the mid-20th Century over jurisdictional questions in the divided U.S. church and elsewhere.

Ashjian firmly applauded the unity strides manifested by the church leaders on their visit, saying, “They are working hand in hand, heart to heart, in this beautiful deepening of the unity of the church.”

However, he said, “on the local level, things were done to undermine this spirit,” alluding to various shifts in arrangements that left him or Karekin out of some proceedings.

“My heart is bleeding for this petty undermining of what they are doing together,” he said.

Manoogian said the trip was not to enhance unity or cooperation of the two wings, but to deal with rebuilding the devastated sector of Armenia. “It’s wrong to connect this to issues of a divided church,” he said.