A Bridge of Faith : Armenian Religious Leader Seeks to Reconcile a Divided Church

The bearded patriarch from Beirut was on a U.S. tour of Armenian Orthodox churches two years ago--but only parishes aligned with his branch of the divided church--when the Northridge earthquake hit, shaking him out of bed at the Universal Hilton Hotel.

A couple days later, Karekin II not only surveyed damage to Holy Martyrs Armenian Apostolic Church in Encino but he also visited St. Peter Armenian Church in Van Nuys, a congregation loyal to another branch of Armenian Christianity.

It was an unusual gesture of reconciliation, but foreshadowed the future.

The same patriarch--or “Catholicos,” roughly equivalent to the Pope in the Roman Catholic church--returned Thursday to Los Angeles, head of the other branch, where he is working to reunite them.

The Los Angeles area has an estimated 350,000 residents of Armenian heritage, many of whom belonged to the branch headed by the mother church in Etchmaidzin, Armenia. Others belonged to a branch based in Lebanon, which split off 60 years ago because Etchmaidzin was in the part of Armenia--now independent--then under Soviet rule.

After 18 years as Karekin II, Catholicos of Cilicia based in Lebanon, the Oxford-educated patriarch was elected last April as the Catholicos of All Armenians, the leader of the mother church in Etchmaidzin, drawing closer the two branches.

When he left the Lebanon-based branch to take up his new position, he took the name Karekin I because the Armenia-based church had no previous Catholicos of that name.

Since beginning his U.S. tour Jan. 10, Karekin I has emphasized that in spiritual terms there is only one church.

The multilingual patriarch repeated that theme in a news conference Thursday at St. John Armenian Apostolic Church in Hollywood, saying that unity talks have been held for years on the U.S. East Coast and that he will be having discussions with his successor as head of the Lebanon-based church, Aram I.

“Since I was here two years ago, I have seen much closer associations and a rapprochement between the two administrative units,” Karekin I said.

He set the stage for this reunion with his unusual visit shortly after the Northridge temblor to quake-damaged St. Peter’s in Van Nuys.

“He ignored, let’s say, jurisdictional boundaries and walked through the rubble in the sanctuary, carefully stepping over the pieces of stained glass, got close to the altar and then said, ‘Let’s pray,’ ” recalled St. Peter’s pastor, Father Shnork Demirjian.

“At that time, I wasn’t thinking about the schism of the church, which is based only on political reasons, because I was feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit,” Demirjian said.

“I still feel that only through prayer and the Holy Spirit can this division be healed.”

Among events on his six-day Southern California tour, Karekin I will meet Mayor Richard Riordan and the Los Angeles City Council today, attend a banquet in Century City Saturday night, and celebrate the Divine Liturgy at 10 a.m. Sunday at the partially repaired and renovated St. Peter’s.

Karekin I also told of his hope for cultural and political unity among Armenians in the new, independent republic. “Our ancestors closed their eyes to dream the life we are now living,” the patriarch told nearly 400 people at St. John’s Armenian Church on Thursday afternoon.

However, Karekin I declined to comment to reporters on the volatile political situation in Armenia. The country’s leading opposition party, the Dashnak, has been outlawed by Armenia’s president, Levon Der-Petrossian, and critics have decried the action as undemocratic.

“This is not an issue for the church,” he said. “It is for the courts to decide.”

Outside St. John’s Church on Vine Street, two limousines, four police cars, and several plainclothes security officers waited. Although terrorist attacks between Armenians and Turks have eased in the last few years, security was still tight.

In Southern California’s large Armenian community, not all Christians owe spiritual allegiance to the patriarch. Some Armenian-heritage Christians belong to Episcopal, Catholic, Methodist or mainline congregations with no particular ethnic identity, and some attend other ethnic churches, such as the United Armenian Congregational Church in Cahuenga Pass or the Armenian Church of the Nazarene in Glendale.

But among Armenian Orthodox churches, grass-roots cooperation between the two jurisdictions “is getting better all the time,” said Glendale attorney Arsen Danielian, vice chairman of the regional executive council of the Lebanon-based branch.

Reflecting the movement of the Armenian community to the San Fernando Valley, the western (U.S.) diocese of the Armenia-linked branch, headed by Archbishop Vatche Hovsepian, 65, is expected to move its headquarters this summer to a building it purchased on Glenoaks Boulevard in Burbank. The diocese went from its earthquake-damaged offices in Hollywood to temporary quarters in Pasadena in 1994, but the archbishop said that the Burbank facility will provide space for worship as well.

“With minor improvements, we can convert a warehouse there to a domed church with seating for 400 persons,” Hovsepian said.

“Eventually we hope to build a cathedral there,” he said, noting that the diocese’s previous cathedral in Hollywood, St. John, has been converted to a parish church.

Correspondent Michael Krikorian contributed to this story.