Aram I.

Aram I Keshishian ( born May 8, 1947 in Beirut ) is a priest of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the current " Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia ".

Life

Aram Keshishian Pedro was born in 1947 in Beirut. He was ordained a priest in 1968. In 1970 he received the title of Vartabed, a doctor of theology of the Armenian Apostolic Church. While studying in New York, he was in 1978 appointed vicar of the Diocese of Beirut. In 1979 he was elected Primate of Lebanon; episcopal ordination took place on 22 August 1980 in Antelias. The office of bishop, he stepped to the middle of the Lebanese civil war. As Primate he sat down, therefore, for the maintenance of church activities, such as church schools, social organizations and local communities a believer. He also supported the unity movement in Lebanon. Bishop of Beirut and Primate of Lebanon, he was until 1995, when the choice Synod ( 35 clergy and lay representatives 115 ), chaired by the Catholicos Karekin I chose him from Echmiadzin Catholicos of Cilicia. Ordination and enthronement took place on 1 July 1995 by Catholicos Karekin I of Etchmiadzin, Patriarch Torkom Manugian of Jerusalem and Patriarch Karekin II Kazanjian of Constantinople Opel.

Study

Aram Keshishian studied philosophy, systematic theology and the history of the Eastern Churches first seminary of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Lebanon Antelias, later on the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary of the Lebanese Baptists, the American University of Beirut, the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, and finally at Fordham University in New York. Even as a bishop, he lectured on Armenian Apostolic Seminary in Antelias and the Haigazian University in Beirut, where he taught Armenian philology and theology. He wrote numerous scientific papers in Armenian, French and English.

Ecumenical activity

1972 Bishop Aram Keshishian Chairman Secretary of the Catholicosate of Cilicia for ecumenical relations and represented the Catholicate in this position on many ecumenical meetings. As a delegate of the Armenian Apostolic Church, he also took part in the general assemblies of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi in 1975, partly in Vancouver in 1983 and in Canberra in 1991. In 1975, he was finally a member of the Commission on Faith and Order of the WCC and since 1983 he was a member of the Standing Committee of this Commission. At the meeting in Vancouver, he was elected to the Main Committee of the WCC and of the Assembly in Canberra, he emerged as the presenter of the main and execution Committees and was there first representative of the Eastern Church, and also the youngest person in this office. In Harare in 1998 he was re-elected. In addition, Aram Keshishian was co-founder of the Council of the Eastern Churches in 1974 and a member of the associated implementation committee. He is also an honorary member of the Ecumenical Foundation of the Catholic Church Pro Oriente in Vienna and many other ecumenical organizations. During his visit to the Vatican on 26 January 1997, he signed a joint declaration with Ecumenical Pope John Paul II at the funeral in Rome in 2005, he took part personally.

Political opinions

End of August 2006 called Aram I, the involvement of Turkish troops in the UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon on the basis of the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1918 as " morally unacceptable."