Episcopal Press and News
Churches Mourn Death of Karekin I, Leader of Armenian Apostolic Church
Episcopal News Service. August 4, 1999 [99-105]
(ENS) Church leaders are mourning the death of His Holiness Karekin I, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, who died June 29 after a long illness. He had worked for years to strengthen and deepen the ecumenical relations of his church at both world and national levels.
"His qualities of spirituality, scholarship, and ecumenical leadership have graced the wider ecclesiastical world and stand as a credit to the courage and determination of the Armenian church and people even in the face of earthquakes, genocide, and persecution," Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold said in a statement.
By 1995, when he was elected catholicos, Karekin I already had played a major role in the World Council of Churches. He was elected to the council's central and executive committees in 1968 and served as vice-moderator of the committees from 1975 to 1983. He also served on the WCC's faith and order commission.
He was an observer to the Vatican II Council in 1962 and the 1968 Lambeth Conference, and was later instrumental in the establishment of the Middle East Council of Churches, of which he was president.
In a tribute to Karekin I, the WCC called him "one of the important architects of ecumenical relations in modern times."
Griswold recalled Karekin I as an active church leader who was "loved and respected by Anglicans around the world, including the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A."
Karekin Sarkissian was a doctoral student at Oxford University under prominent Anglican scholars, Griswold noted, adding that he later was chosen to be the preacher at the installation of Desmond Tutu as the first black dean of Johannesburg Cathedral.
"When His Holiness was award the degree of doctor of divinity, honoris causa, by the General Theological Seminary on May 6, 1998," Griswold recalled, "he congratulated Anglicans for maintaining in harmony both the catholic and evangelical elements of the Christian faith and further remarked how it was 'difficult to draw a distinction between what is Armenian in me and what is Anglican in me.'
"Anglicans will remember him for these personal and pastoral qualities, just as Christian scholars will remember him for his groundbreaking and hopeful studies on the Christological definition of the fourth ecumenical council of Chalcedon," Griswold said.
The WCC commented that Karekin I will be remembered for his unfinished agenda -- he was co-president of the Pan Armenian Committee, which is preparing and coordinating the celebrations of 1,700 years of Christian Armenia, to be culminated in 2001.