Pope Francis met on Monday afternoon, June 3, with Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni of Cilicia, the leader of the Armenian Catholic Church.

The Armenian Patriarch, who was selected by the Armenian Synod in 1999, leads about 350,000 Armenian Catholics worldwide, primarily in Syria and Lebanon. The Armenian Patriarch has his headquarters in Beirut.


http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=18057

The neighboring peoples' churches had already organized their adoration rules until Armenia became officially a Christian country in 301 due to The Illuminator and the Armenian church was constructed. The apostles Tatyos and Partoghomios did not let any trace of rite in our literature in Armenia. Before The Illuminator, when Christianity entered Armenia, due to the preachers of the Greek and Syriac churches, they brought with them to Armenia the adoration invented by their churches with the preaching of the Christian religion. This could not be different, because the Armenian Christianity and the Armenian church were going to be organized after three centuries from the Syriac and the Greek ones, while these two churches were going to have time to be organized before us, to progress, to have exceptional patriarchs and saints, who due to their help those churches improved and progressed, while we were still suffering from the paganism.

The Armenian rite and the Armenian adoration were organized such a bunch, being picked by Syriac and Greek churches inheritance which existed before us and being used by us temporarily. The Armenian divine service, the holy mass, the hymns, all of them resemble to those churches such a warp.

After the arrival of St. Gregory The Illuminator, because of the inexistence of the Armenian letters, the Armenian church continued to adore with the same foreign rites and languages. Before the Armenian symbols discovery, the Armenian adoration by the preaching of The Illuminator continued to be done particularly with the Greek language. As to Parbetsi, after the political division of Armenia in 387, the Syriac language succeeded to the Greek one because the Greek language was pursued in the Persian part. Khorenatsi (the right reverend 23rd ) witnessed that : "they were conducting the convents and the people of the Armenian church by working in the church and learning to read the Syriac letters" (A. Trvank. J.), while in the Greek part they were continuing "to conduct with the Greek letters and not with the Syriac ones". The same way continued from The Illuminator till Sahag Mesrob, Drtad The Great till the king Vramshabouh’s period, and till the Armenian symbols discovery.

Turkey’s foreign ministry has lodged a formal protest with the Vatican after Pope Francis referred to the mass murder of Armenians as “the first genocide of the 20th century.”

The Pope alluded briefly to the Armenian genocide during a June 3 meeting with Armenian Catholic Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni of Cilicia. Several years earlier, while serving as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio described the killing and forced deportation of millions of Armenians as “the gravest crime of Ottoman Turkey against the Armenian people and all of humanity.”

An estimated 1 to 1.5 million Armenians died between 1915 and 1918 in massacres, in cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρs, and on forced marches. But the government of Turkey has steadfastly denied that a genocidal campaign took place. The Turkish government “expressed disappointment” over the Pope’s remarks, conveying its displeasure to Vatican diplomatic representatives both in Ankara and in Rome.



http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=18097

Posh is one clever new church propagandist.


 :soapbox: :soapbox: :soapbox: :soapbox:

Poche,

Why should we care about this meeting?  It's not as exciting as if Pope Francis were to publicly renounce a dogma.

We should care because the Armenian rite has a traditional liturgy. They are part of the Catholic Church and we should get to know them.