Patriarch Karekin II invites Pope Leo XIV to visit Armenia in Meeting in Castel Gandolfo

The Patriarch and Catholic of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Karekin II, invited Pope Leo XIV to visit Armenia during a meeting at the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo.

The meeting, which took place in the Barberini Villa – summer residence of the Pope with View of Lake Albano – was the first between both leaders. Pope León has begun to spend there on Tuesdays, his traditional rest day, while the apostolic palace in the Vatican is in renovations.

According to declared Vatican News In its edition in Language Armenia Mons. Khajag Barsamian, representative of the Armenian Apostolic Church before the Holy See, both dialogue about “the need for a peace -based peace.”

The invitation of Karekin II prolongs the path of ecumenical dialogue and closeness of the pontiffs towards Armenia, the first nation to officially adopt Christianity in 301. The patriarch has already met in the Vatican with San Juan Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

San Juan Pablo II was the first pontiff to visit Armenian soil in 2001, on the occasion of the 1700 anniversary of Armenia’s conversion. Pope Francis made an apostolic trip there in 2016.

The Armenian Apostolic Church – also called Orthodox Apostolic Church Armenia – is the national church of the country and is part of the Family of Oriental Orthodox Churches. It is distinguished from the Armenian Catholic Church, in full communion with Rome. The formal separation with the Catholic Church occurred after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, although in recent decades relations have narrowed. In 1996, San Juan Pablo II and then Patriarch Karekin I signed a joint statement on the common origins of the Christian faith.

During his visit to Rome, Karekin II also met with Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Dicasterio for the promotion of the unity of Christians, and with Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicasterio for Culture and Education. In addition, he prayed in the Basilica of Santa María la Mayor, before the tomb of Pope Francis and the venerated image of Salus Populi Romani.

Karekin II’s first visit to Rome was in November 2000, when, newly chosen, was received by San Juan Pablo II in the framework of the Great Jubilee. On that occasion, the Pope gave him relics of San Gregorio the illuminator, patron of Armenia and evangelizer of his king in the fourth century.

The Armenian church maintains deep ties with its people worldwide, also marked by the memory of the 1915 Armenian genocide – called in Armenian Medz Yeghern (“Great crime”) -, in which up to 1.5 million people died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, according to historians estimates. In 2015, Pope Francis described him as “the first genocide of the twentieth century”, which raised the protest of Türkiye.

So far, the Vatican has not announced international trips of Pope Leo XIV, although many foresee that his first visit outside Italy will be ecumenical: a trip to Turkey on the occasion of the 1700th anniversary of the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea.

Translated and adapted by ACI Press. Originally published in CNA.