Author: Garo Vardanian

PRESS OFFICE 

Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern) 

630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016 

Contact: Chris Zakian 

Tel: (212) 686-0710; Fax: (212) 779-3558 

E-mail: [email protected] 

Website: www.armenianchurch.us 

 

November 2, 2023

__________________ 

 

ATTENTION EDITOR: Four photos attached, with captions below. Download additional photos at the link (credit Harout Barsoumian):

https://easterndiocese.smugmug.com/St-Vartan-Armenian-Cathedral/Bishop-Mesrops-Return-Badarak-Oct-14-2023/

 

 

 

HEADLINE:

 

By Stephan S. Nigohosian

 

A most blessed and joyous homecoming took place on Saturday, October 14, when newly-ordained Bishop Mesrop Parsamyan returned to New York City’s St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral to celebrate his first episcopal Divine Liturgy as bishop of the Eastern Diocese.

 

The Primate, who had been consecrated as a bishop at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin a week earlier by His Holiness Karekin II, the Catholicos of All Armenians, presided over the special badarak before a large gathering of clergy and lay people from near and far.

 

In a time of heartrending events and hardship thrust upon Armenians around the world, embodied in the tragedies in Artsakh and Armenia, Bishop Mesrop’s message of unwavering faith and optimism for the future of the Armenian Church and its faithful instilled feelings of hope and perseverance in all who heard his message.

 

As the heavenly strains of Khorhoort Khoreen (O Mystery Deep) began the service, Bishop Mesrop, accompanied by a procession of clergy and altar servers, entered the sanctuary and bestowed his blessings among the faithful. A gold processional cross, followed by colorful processional banners featuring images of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, were held by the procession of clergy as they made their way through the cathedral. As they reached the altar, angelic strains of the choir reached a crescendo, further adding to the sacred atmosphere of the event about to unfold. 

 

 

* Blessings on the Faithful

 

From the altar, with arms outstretched, Bishop Mesrop faced the congregation and chanted the centuries-old Armenian prayers. Multiple cameras placed throughout the sanctuary provided those participating in the service at home with immersive views, including an intimate, front-facing view of Bishop Mesrop praying on the holy altar. Among the clergy and altar servers assisting him throughout the liturgy were Cathedral Vicar Fr. Davit Karamyan, and Diocesan pastors Fr. Armash Bagdasarian (Wynnewood, PA), Fr. Hakob Gevorgyan (Cheltenham, PA), Fr. Martiros Hakobyan (Houston, TX), and Fr. Avedis Kalaydjian (Racine, WI), along with a retinue of deacons from the cathedral and outlying parishes, as well as St. Nersess seminarians and other altar servers.

 

Members of the St. Vartan Cathedral Choir, who play such an essential role in aural aspect of the Divine Liturgy every Sunday, were conducted by Maestro Khoren Mekanejian. On this occasion, the ensemble was further complemented by choristers from local parishes around the country, as well as by organist Deacon Ari Terjanian from St. Gregory of Narek Church in Cleveland, OH.

 

Among the dignitaries seated in the chancel at the foot of the altar, and in the front of the congregation, were Archbishop Vicken Aykazian and Archbishop Anoushavan Tanielian, as well as representatives of various sister churches and the diplomatic corps, clergy from throughout the Eastern Diocese, leaders of Armenian organizations, and members of the Diocesan Council.

 

 

* A Homily from the Heart

 

Following the blessing and distribution of the Holy Eucharist, Bishop Mesrop delivered a heartfelt and uplifting homily. “Today, I am overcome with a spirit of thanks to the Lord, who took my life in His hands, shaped my soul, inspired my heart, rescued me from the shadow of death and guided me step by step to this ministry in His service,” he said.

 

Bishop Mesrop continued by acknowledging the pivotal role his family, friends and colleagues have collectively played in nourishing his spiritual development throughout his life’s journey. “Thank you to my clergy brothers and all our faithful who placed their trust in me, honored me, stood by me in my time of injury and triumph, and shared your strength and love with me,” he said.

 

He expressed special gratitude to Catholicos Karekin II, who the Primate said has encouraged and guided him throughout his ministry. And he thanked Berge Setrakian, the distinguished longtime president of AGBU, who stood as Bishop Mesrop’s godfather during his ordination.

 

Bishop Mesrop then directed attention to the tragic situation that befell our beloved homeland of Artsakh, likening his role to that of a father entrusted with consoling his family experiencing unfathomable loss. “While suffering can sow the seeds of bitterness and resentment, that is not how a Christian should respond to it,” he explained. “God understands our pain and suffering, for He experienced it Himself through the sacrifice of His Son. We must trust that God is always with us, right beside us,” he said, adding, “God will see His justice done.”

 

Bishop Mesrop then looked toward the future and the challenging work ahead, imploring the faithful to assist our brethren fleeing Artsakh and to work together to strengthen our Diocese. Securing a bright future for the Armenian Church will enable future generations to know our Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

The Primate then delineated his vision of three tasks, or “gifts,” that would be his focus for our Diocese: Evangelization (being a witness to the truth of the Holy Gospel); Spirituality (translating the invisible inner reality of the Spirit into the visible); and Love (our relationship with one another and the Heavenly Father). “When I stepped up to the altar today, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of love,” he revealed. “I will rely on your prayers, my beautiful and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ.”

 

The viewing audience for Bishop Mesrop’s special Divine Liturgy included thousands of people from across the Diocese and around the world, sharing in the service as it was broadcast over the Internet. The small, dedicated production team included Yervant Keshishian, who directed the program, Artur Petrosyan on the mobile floor camera, and narrator Christopher Zakian. 

 

Following the splendid badarak, worshippers adjourned to a bounteous reception in the Diocesan Center’s Haik and Alice Kavookjian Auditorium, lovingly sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Berge and Vera Setrakian. The occasion was a welcome opportunity for the large crowd of faithful to congratulate their new bishop, receive his blessing, and wish him well in his leadership of the Eastern Diocese.

 

Click the following links to:

VIEW an extensive photo gallery by photographer Harout Barsoumian.

WATCH a recording of Bishop Mesrop’s homecoming badarak.

–10/20/23

 

* * *

 

PHOTO CAPTION 1:

Diocesan Primate Bishop Mesrop Parsamyan was welcomed back to the U.S. after his episcopal consecration in Armenia, in a splendid liturgy at New York’s St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral. (Photo by Harout Barsoumian.)

 

PHOTO CAPTION 2:

Diocesan Primate Bishop Mesrop Parsamyan holds the episcopal staff as he delivers a sermon during the liturgy on Oct. 14, 2023. (Photo by Harout Barsoumian.)

 

PHOTO CAPTION 3:

Berge Setrakian (at left), longtime president of AGBU, was Bishop Mesrop’s godfather during his ordination, and spoke during the reception honoring the Primate’s return to the U.S. Pictured at right Diocesan Legate Archbishop Vicken Aykazian. (Photo by Harout Barsoumian.)

 

PHOTO CAPTION 3:

A view from the altar of St. Vartan Cathedral, from Bishop Mesrop’s return badarak. (A screenshot from the Internet broadcast.)

 

* * *

 

LINKS:

 

Photo Gallery:

https://easterndiocese.smugmug.com/St-Vartan-Armenian-Cathedral/Bishop-Mesrops-Return-Badarak-Oct-14-2023/

 

Video Recording:

https://www.youtube.com/live/iiShXopspos?si=wkexlcPXouMqe9eO

 

# # #

North Texas eNews

Oct 28 2023

Oct 24 2023

Oct 24 2023

GENEVA/YEREVAN, Armenia,  – Two-thirds of refugee children in Armenia are enrolled in national school systems, one month after more than 21,000 school-age children fled their homes. Efforts must now focus on increasing access for the remaining 1 in 3 children currently not attending school, UNICEF said today.

Children who arrived in Armenia have not had continuous access to quality education in recent years, making an inclusive school system that provides catch-up classes and tailored support critical.

“Schools are more than places of learning. This is especially true in times of displacement and uncertainty. Access to education provides refugee children with the structure and support needed to help them overcome their experiences. Schools also provide children with nutrition and mental health services, socialisation and much more to support their health and well-being,” said Christine Weigand, UNICEF Armenia Representative.

“Investment must be made in increasing access to schooling for the 1 in 3 refugee children not enrolled in education and ensuring schools are inclusive for all children.”

UNICEF is on the ground working with the Government of Armenia and other partners to help refugee children access the care and support they need. Together with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, UNICEF is identifying needs and gaps in the current education system. This includes identifying areas that need bolstering and expansion to support effective inclusion of all refugee children. 

UNICEF is providing educational kits including schools-in-a-box and early childhood development kits. In addition, UNICEF and its partners are distributing a first batch of schoolbags with stationary for 1,000 children. Procurement of an additional schoolbags to address the additional emerging needs of a further 2,000 children is ongoing. UNICEF is also gearing up to expand learning spaces in host schools and preschools across the country.

So far UNICEF has provided mental health and psychosocial support, and health and nutrition support for up to 10,000 refugee children and their caregivers. UNICEF and partners have also provided more than 1,000 children and caregivers with child protection case management support, and over 3,000 with psychological first aid.

UNICEF is appealing for US$ 12.6 million to provide critical services including education, health, child protection, nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene in the first six months.

#####

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/two-thirds-refugee-children-armenia-enrolled-school-efforts-must-now-focus-expanding

Oct 20 2023

Elisabeth Stewart

As night fell over the University chapel last Thursday, about 50 students, faculty, and community members gathered to commemorate the lives lost during the mass exodus of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the breakaway state of Nagorno-Karabakh following Azerbaijan’s recent invasion. Until this month, upwards of 120,000 Armenians lived in the contested region and their departure in the face of fears of ethnic cleansing has been referred to as a cultural genocide.

On Sept. 19, Azerbaijan launched a military attack into Nagorno-Karabakh, known by ethnic Armenians as Artsakh, and took control of the region, following three decades of territorial conflict and a months long Azerbaijani blockade. As of late September, over 80 percent of the region's inhabitants had fled their homes, and the government of Nagorno-Karabakh announced that it would dissolve itself by January 2024. While Azerbaijani officials have denied reprisal against Armenians, Armenians have fled in the face of longtime violent anti-Armenian rhetoric and policy from the Azerbaijani government.

The vigil was organized by the Princeton Armenian Society (PAS) “in remembrance of those who sacrificed their lives for the freedom and self-determination of the land’s Armenian population,” according to the flyer for the event. It marked an important moment in the relatively new society's efforts to serve Armenian interests on Princeton's campus.

At the event, PAS Co-President Hayk Yengibaryan ’26, spoke about the cultural importance of Artsakh. Yengibaryan shared that Artsakh was an Armenian cultural and religious hotbed, the site of the first Armenian school in the early 400s, and the birthplace of the Armenian alphabet.

“This vigil was to come and commemorate not only the rich history of this region, but also all the fallen soldiers, the innocent civilians, the women, the children, the fathers, the sons, the daughters, and everyone who passed away due to the attack,” he said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. 

Yengibaryan is an associate Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’

Among the attendees to the event were University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83, representatives who spoke on behalf of Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ-06) and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ-04), and the University’s Orthodox Chaplain Father Daniel Skvir ’66 who led a closing prayer

PAS Co-President Katya Hovnanian ’25 said at the vigil that the seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh marks “the second darkest moment” in Armenian history, following the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire following World War I. 

“Our diaspora is bonded by this trauma — the Armenian Genocide — that happened over a century ago, and that was recognized just recently by the United States and 33 other countries,” she said. “That trauma brings us together, but it’s also such a tight knit community. It’s like this vast network, and we’re all truly brothers and sisters.”

Since 2015, the Princeton Armenian Society has represented the Armenian diaspora community on campus. After its founding, the PAS experienced a period of inactivity from 2018 to 2020. 

“When I was a freshman here in 2019, I thought I was the only Armenian student on campus, which wasn't true,” Lena Hoplamazian ’24 said. “It wasn't until [Hovnanian] came in 2021 and kind of rebooted the Armenian society that there actually was any type of student organizing or community on campus.” 

Born in New York City, Hovnanian grew up in Armenia and participated in the protests during the peaceful 2018 Velvet Revolution which displaced a longtime political leader, thus, in Hovnanian's opinion, bringing “democracy to Armenia.” In 2020, during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, a 44 day conflict in which Azerbaijan regained control of most of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven thousand soldiers and civilians were killed, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that Hovnanain ran delivered humanitarian aid to displaced Armenians, along with serving other global causes like helping survivors of a port blast in Lebanon. 

“Then I come to college, and I’m completely in a frenzy. I just witnessed the most atrocious event in Armenia’s history, and no one on campus seemed to be aware of it,” she said. “Very few [Armenians] were here, and we didn’t feel like our voice was supported just because we were so few.” 

Hovnanian said that PAS “tried [their] best to get dinners every week to talk about Armenia, its history, and its culture,” and brought the Ambassador of Armenia to the United States, Lilit Kamo Makunts, to speak on campus. Members attribute PAS’s growth to the leadership of Hovnanian and Yengibaryan in the past year. 

Yengibaryan was born in Armenia’s capital city but grew up in Los Angeles, home to the largest Armenian population in the United States.

“When I came in as a first year student, I was wanting to get involved right away because I was coming from a city where there were so many Armenians and there were constantly events and advocacy happening,” he said. 

In the month before Yengibaryan submitted his application to Princeton, the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia hosted a talk with Khazar Ibrahim, the Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the United States. 

“I immediately was outraged about this event happening at a campus that I wanted to attend,” Yengibaryan said. “[In my application], I wrote about how if I come to Princeton, I may even challenge the powers at Princeton and [use] my academic freedom of speech to challenge things that I don't necessarily agree with.” 

Yengibaryan said that the University admitted six Armenian students into the Class of 2026 which has enabled them to restart PAS.  

“We were able to figure out how to get funding, start an Instagram page, start outreaching to students and kind of being present and putting ourselves out on campus,” he said. “We’ve been able to grow tremendously, and an event like this [vigil] is a top reason why. It goes to show how much we’ve grown in the past year and two months.”

This year marks the first year the organization has formed an executive board with a vice-president, treasurer, marketing, social, and outreach positions.

“We want everyone to feel like they have a role in our society, that they're doing something for the good of the Armenian cause, and spreading our culture and our history and our roots to so many other people on such a diverse and beautiful campus,” Yengibaryan said.

With ongoing conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the issue has been key in the organization's events. In September of last year, PAS collaborated with Armenian students from 15 other universities to write an open letter to “denounce Azerbaijan’s invasion of Armenia” in “defense of democracy.”  Since then, they’ve brought speakers on Armenian topics to campus, hosted an Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Lecture in April, and have continued to collaborate with the University of Pennsylvania’s Armenian Students Association. 

“We have a lot of plans to continue to build off of this momentum, and one of the issues that we are trying to tackle as a society is actually within our Near Eastern Studies Department,” Yengibaryan said.

In their interviews with the ‘Prince,’ PAS members mentioned that Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies has no courses, programs, or professors who specialized in Armenian studies, in contrast to other leading institutions such as Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. 

In a guest contribution to the ‘Prince’ last year calling on Princeton to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide, Hovnanian described what she views as anti-Armenia bias in the history of Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies: 

“Princeton’s Near Eastern Department is notorious among Armenians,” she wrote. “In 1996, a New York Times article exposed links between large payments of the Turkish Government and the appointment of Professor Emeritus Heath Lowry, a genocide denialist, as the Chair of Princeton’s Near Eastern Department. Professor Emeritus Bernard Lewis, another notable historian of Turkey and Middle Eastern Studies, and a peer of Lowry at Princeton’s Near Eastern Department, refused to call the atrocities a genocide — he said there was a lack of evidence in the Ottoman archives.”

“As a leading institution, we feel that the school needs to address its Armenian presence on campus, and rightfully, hire faculty and teach Armenian courses,” she said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

PAS member Mikaela Avakian ’24 is pursuing a certificate in Near Eastern Studies.

“It’s important to fill these academic [gaps] in regard to Armenian studies so that people can know what Armenia is beyond the Armenian Genocide, that we are not a country that’s merely gone through trauma, but that we’ve made real-time contributions culturally, politically, literally,” she said. 

Avakian added that as “an ancient kingdom, a New Republic, the first Christian Nation, and one of the ex-Soviet Bloc countries, there’s various academic angles from which you can approach Armenian studies.”

In the absence of Armenian studies, Avakian said PAS creates “an environment where talking about Armenian politics, Armenian language, Armenian culture is prioritized.” She inherited most of her knowledge of Armenia through personal research and her family’s stories of Artsakh, which she recounted at Thursday’s vigil: 

“I always took pride in the fact that my family, my ancestors, had cultivated a heritage and an identity around their land, a land that existed outside of the political imagination,” she said. “I've never been to Artsakh, but my memory is veneered with… images, tales and stories that keep me oriented to this land, to my ancestors’ land.” 

Avakian concluded with her grandmother’s words: “My child, keep your head high, stand strong. Everything will be as it should.”

“I am heartbroken and I know that I'm not alone in this heartbreak as such is the burden that weighs on the hearts of all Armenians, on the hearts of all that are gathered here in solidarity today,” she said. “Even still, even in the most trying of times, we must live with hope and prayer.”

Elisabeth Stewart is a News contributor for the 'Prince.'

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.