The Armenian Apostolic Church said over the weekend that its supreme head, Catholicos Garegin II, reached agreements with Georgia’s political and spiritual leaders that will help to resolve its long-running disputes with the Georgian Orthodox Church.Read the rest here.
Garegin met with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II at the start of a weeklong visit to Georgia on Friday. The two pontiffs held a more detailed discussion in the presence of high-ranking Armenian and Georgian clerics on Saturday.
Garegin expressed his satisfaction with the meetings as he and Ilia made public statements at the Georgian patriarch’s official residence in Tbilisi.
In a separate statement, Garegin’s press office said the two sides agreed that the Georgian authorities should finally grant a “legal status” to the local diocese of the Armenian Church. Like Georgia’s other minority denominations, the diocese has no official registration and is therefore not treated by the Georgian authorities as a single legal entity.
Being a Disciple of Christ
18 hours ago
2 comments:
Let me state right off that I have not a clue what the bad blood is between the Armenian & Georgian Church is. Since the Armenian is part of the Oriental Churches and the Georgian is of the Byzantine Churches, I doubt the bad blood is over the 4th Council. I suspect from the report it about the Armenian being upset that the Secular & Church officals have not accepted (in the past and present)an Armenian Diocese in what is obviously not Armenia...what gives? What color is the sky in these Patriarch's worlds, hum?
This kind of thing tends to give weight to those who say the Orthodox Churches are only ethnic social clubs not truly interested in the Gospel.
The issues involve the Soviet era more than anything else - from what I understand, Armenian Orthodox churches in Georgia were closed and then reopened as Georgian Orthodox churches without consulting the Armenians, whose diocese in Georgia is not registered with that country's "democratic" government and is generally ignored along with the rest of Georgia's large Armenian community's institutions.
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