Mother-Son Priests Are an Episcopal First
As usual, at 10:30 a.m. last Sunday, the Rev. Rosanna Case Kazanjian celebrated the weekly Eucharist service at St. John Episcopal Church, an interracial, economically struggling parish of 85 families. There was a twist, however. The priest’s co-celebrant was her 29-year-old son, the Rev. Victor Kazanjian.
It is believed that they are the first mother-son Episcopal priests in the country.
Rosanna Kazanjian is a widow whose father, the Rev. Harold Case, served as Boston University’s president and befriended divinity student Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s. She was a full-time mother for several decades, but after raising three children, she returned to school and earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology at Boston University.
She graduated from Episcopal Divinity School in nearby Cambridge in 1985, one year before her son.
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