Armenian History

Tragedy and Rebirth--1915-Present

1915. Under cover of the First World War, the Ottoman empire begins an official campaign to exterminate its Armenian population, later to be known as the Armenian Genocide. It begins on April 24, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople; it continues with the massacre and deportation of civilian Armenians in cities and villages across Anatolia. By the early 1920s, the Genocide has consumed a million and a half Armenian lives; countless others are scattered across the globe into the burgeoning communities of the Armenian diaspora; and the remnants (both monumental and human) of a centuries-old Armenian civilization lie in ruins.

1916. Jemal Pasha orders Sahak II to assume the new post of Catholicos-Patriarch of all Armenians in the Ottoman empire, based at Jerusalem after the abolition of the Sees of Sis, Aghtamar, Constantinople and Jerusalem. Sahak II reluctantly accepts, but his hope that this might end the massacres is in vain. During the same period, Komitas Vartabed is placed in an asylum in Constantinople, a spiritual casualty of the Genocide. The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople is exiled to Baghdad.

1917. The Bolshevik Revolution inaugurates a despotic Communist government in Russia.

1918. Faced with the Turkish invasion of what is left of the Armenian homeland, Catholicos Gevorg V remains in Etchmiadzin against the advice of military authorities. Catholicos Sahak II returns to Cilicia. That same year, an independent Republic of Armenia is established.

1920. The Armenian Church adopts the Gregorian calendar. The same year, the first Republic of Armenia is subsumed under the Soviet Union, beginning 70 years of domination. Armenia’s identity as a Christian civilization is severely challenged during this period, and the church as an institution is periodically threatened with extinction under the atheistic Soviet regime.

1931. After residing in Aleppo, Catholicos of Cilicia Sahak II settles in Antelias, north of Beirut, establishing it as the new seat of the Catholicate of Cilicia.

1933. Archbishop Ghevont Tourian is assassinated during the Christmas Eve Divine Liturgy at New York’s Holy Cross Church. This crime is the culmination of years of partisan conflict, and eventually leads to a formal administrative split within the Armenian Church of America.

1938. Catholicos of All Armenians Khoren I is found murdered under mysterious circumstances, a victim of the brutality of the Soviet secret police. That same year, South America is established as a distinct diocese, with its headquarters located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1939. Citing the Armenian massacres during World War I as his inspiration, Adolph Hitler announces his intention to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. Six million Jews are killed in the events later known as the Holocaust.

1945. Catholicos Gevorg VI receives his office after negotiations with the Kremlin allowing for the election. Gevorg VI re-establishes the seminary at Etchmiadzin.

1951. Armenian and other Oriental Orthodox scholars enter into consultations with Byzantine Orthodox scholars to try to heal the breach in Christendom caused by the Council of Chalcedon, 1500 years earlier. In the early 1990s, these scholars conclude that the dispute was a matter of semantics only, and not a fundamental theological disagreement.

1955. Vasken I Baljian is elected Catholicos of All Armenians. Vasken I travels extensively to create closer ties between Armenia and the diaspora. He greatly strengthens Etchmiadzin in all respects under the very difficult conditions of Soviet rule. Under Vasken I, the Armenian Church joins the World Council of Churches.

1957. The Catholicate of Cilicia takes under its jurisdiction the separated churches in the U.S., organizing them as a prelacy.

1968. Catholicos Vasken I arrives in New York to consecrate St. Vartan Cathedral—the New World’s first Armenian cathedral.

1984. The Armenian churches of Canada are organized as a distinct diocese.

1988. The struggle for the liberation of Nagorno-Karabagh begins. Later that year, an earthquake kills tens of thousands in northwestern Armenia; Catholicos of All Armenians Vasken I and Catholicos Karekin II of Cilicia work together to rally Armenia and the diaspora. Among many other consequences, the crisis results in the opening up of Armenia (still a Soviet republic) to aid from the Free World. Much of the latter is organized by the communities of the Armenian diaspora.

1989. The Berlin Wall—symbol of a world divided between the free West and totalitarian East—falls. By 1991, the Soviet Union itself is defunct.

1991. The citizens of Armenia vote to establish their country as a free, independent republic, and shortly thereafter elect Levon Ter Petrosyan as its first president. The Republic of Armenia’s first ambassador to the United Nations establishes offices in New York’s diocesan headquarters.

1994. After a pontificate of nearly four decades, during which Armenia finally enters the harbor political freedom, Vasken I passes away. He is succeeded some months later by Catholicos Karekin Sarkissian, who thereby becomes the first Catholicos of Cilicia to be elected as Catholicos of All Armenians. Karekin I is also distinguished as the first Catholicos of All Armenians to be elected in the free Republic of Armenia.

1996. Aram I is elected Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia.

1999. With the passing of Karekin I, Archbishop Karekin Nersessian, Primate of the Araratian Diocese, is elected Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians.

2001. Armenians around the world celebrate the 1700th anniversary of Armenia’s conversion to Christianity.