Հայ Կաթողիկէ Եկեղեցին Լեհաստանում

According to tradition, Christian missions in Armenia were led by the apostles St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew. The hierarchical structure of the Church was established in the early 4th century by Gregory, known as the Illuminator of Armenia (Armenian: Grigor Lusavorich). At that time, Armenia was ruled by Tiridates III of the Arsacid dynasty, a persecutor of Christianity who was responsible for the martyrdom of the holy virgins Hripsime and Gayane and their companions. He also ordered the imprisonment of Gregory, but Gregory succeeded in converting the king and his court. Consecrated as a bishop in Caesarea Cappadocia (314/315), Gregory solidified Christianity in Armenia, which thereafter became the state religion. His first residence was Ashtishat. Over time, his successors adopted the title of "catholicos" and relocated to Vagharshapat (part of present-day Etchmiadzin), where, according to tradition, Christ appeared to Gregory in the form of descending fire. The seat of the catholicosate was later moved with the shifting political centers of Armenia—to Dvin, Aghtamar, Argina, Ani, Sebastea, Karmirvank, Dzovk, Hromkla, and Sis.

In the early 5th century, the monk Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet, enabling the introduction of the Armenian language into the liturgy. Translations of the Bible and liturgical books emerged, and a distinct Armenian rite began to take shape. Works by Greek and Syriac philosophers and theologians were also translated. With their own liturgy, the Armenians established themselves as a separate Christian Church. This Church sought to participate in the broader religious life of Christianity, which was then torn apart by doctrinal disputes (Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism). Gregory the Illuminator’s son, Aristakes, attended the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), and his successors accepted the decrees of the councils of Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431).

After the dissolution of the independent Armenian kingdom (428), the Persians transformed the subjugated territory into a province (marz) of Persarmenia and attempted to restore the old religion (Zoroastrianism). In defense of Christianity, an uprising broke out led by Vardan Mamikonian. Despite the defeat of the rebels (451), known as the Vardanids and later canonized by the Armenian Church, the Christian character of the country was preserved.

At the Fourth Council of Chalcedon (451), which defined the dogma of Christ’s two natures in one person, only bishops from the Roman-controlled part of Armenia participated. Meanwhile, the Church in Persarmenia, amid the great debate over Christ’s natures, adopted a theological stance that was not accepted by the majority of Christianity. At the Synod of Dvin (555), it endorsed Monophysitism, condemned by Chalcedon, believing it was defending the Trinitarian doctrine established at Ephesus. They adopted an interpretation once proposed by Cyril of Alexandria, who spoke of “one nature of the incarnate Word” (Christ). Over time, Armenian doctrinal interpretations approached those accepted at Chalcedon, but the Armenian Church consistently refused to recognize Chalcedon (and subsequent councils) as ecumenical.

The Armenians also introduced their own calendar, beginning in 552 of the Julian era, which periodically caused Easter to diverge from that of other Christians. They referred to the Easter of other Christians as “false” or “crooked” (crazatik).

It should be noted, however, that within the Armenian Church there has always been a faction in union with the Universal Church, and the present Armenian Catholic Church (discussed below) is its continuation.

The Byzantine Church repeatedly tried to bring the remaining Armenians into religious unity, viewing Armenian Christianity as heretical. This effort peaked in the early 11th century. Many Armenians joined the Byzantine Church during this period, but the national Church deemed them not only traitors to the faith but also to the nation, denying them the right to call themselves Armenians. Small communities of Chalcedonian (Orthodox) Armenians persisted for centuries but played no significant role.

The first official contacts between the Armenian and Roman Churches occurred in 1080, between Catholicos Gregory II and Pope Gregory VII. The Pope, asked to intervene in disputes with the Greeks, recognized the Armenian Church as orthodox but urged it to accept the Chalcedonian decrees and undertake liturgical reforms. This initial contact had little impact due to geographical distance, but the Crusades changed that.

Following invasions by the Seljuk Turks and Turkmens, Armenian migration to Cilicia increased, and in the 12th century, the Kingdom of Cilician Armenia emerged. In 1199, Levon I Rubenid was crowned king in Tarsus by Conrad von Wittelsbach, Archbishop of Mainz, acting as both papal legate and representative of Emperor Henry VI Hohenstaufen. Papal primacy was accepted by the kingdom’s political and ecclesiastical elite. Kings and barons sought dispensations, favors, and judgments from Popes. Cilician Armenia became the only state in the crusader monarchies coalition whose Church was not Latin, yet its people were considered part of the European cultural sphere.

A legend even emerged claiming that Gregory the Illuminator and King Tiridates III had visited Emperor Constantine the Great and Pope Sylvester I in Rome, forging a pact that included papal authorization for Gregory to conduct missions throughout the East. This legend supported claims of the Roman origins of the Armenian Church’s autocephaly and its Catholic character.

The Holy See recognized the Armenians as orthodox, and their Church, especially in Cilician Armenia, as being in union with it. Although Rome, following Byzantine theologians, criticized Armenian liturgical distinctiveness, these differences were not tied to dogmatic issues. Over time, the Armenian Church adopted some Latin customs: bishops’ mitres and crosiers, the Confiteor prayer, the singing of Psalm 42 (43) at the start of the liturgy, the reading of the second Gospel (John 1:1-14) at its end, and the recognition of seven sacraments.

In the 14th century, the Franciscans succeeded in bringing the archbishop of the Monastery of St. Thaddeus in Artaz, considered the vicar of the catholicos in Greater Armenia, into union with Rome. Catholicism persisted there until the early next century, when the local principality fell, Catholics were expelled, and the Turkmen rulers handed the archiepiscopal seat to non-Catholic Armenians. Under Franciscan influence, Stepanos, Bishop of Sarai on the Volga, and Arakel, Archbishop of Crimea, also pledged obedience to the Holy See. Catholic Armenians played a key role in the Franciscans’ spread of Christianity across the vast Mongol Empire, founding a Catholic cathedral in Beijing and a church in Quanzhou (Zayton) near the Taiwan Strait.

Meanwhile, the Dominicans translated works of Catholic philosophers and theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, into Armenian, revitalizing Armenian philosophical and theological thought, even among those opposed to union with Rome. The intellectual center of these efforts was the Monastery of the Holy Mother of God in Qrna, near Nakhichevan. In 1331, its Armenian monks adopted the Dominican habit and rule, leading to the creation of the Congregation of the Uniate Brethren of St. Gregory the Illuminator, which used the Latin liturgy in Armenian. The Catholic Armenian diocese of Nakhichevan was initially part of the metropolitan see of Sultaniya in Persia.

As the crusader states in the Near East declined, many Armenian monks sought refuge in Italy, where the Dominican-linked Congregation of the Armenian Brethren of St. Basil was established, centered at the Monastery of St. Bartholomew in Genoa. Both Armenian Catholic congregations were approved by Pope Innocent VI in 1356. Armenian monasteries in Italy served as bases and refuges for monks arriving from the East.

The history of Armenian Catholicism in Poland began in the mid-14th century. In 1354, Zacharias, Archbishop of St. Thaddeus in Artaz, arrived, likely to organize the religious life of Catholic Armenians in the Rus’ territories annexed by Casimir the Great, especially in Lviv. Evidence of his presence includes a privilege he granted to a pious confraternity at the Roman Catholic parish of St. Nicholas in Bochnia, a town on the route from Kraków to Lviv.

In 1363, the first bishop for the Armenian community in Lviv, Gregory (known as the Great), was consecrated in Sis, the capital of Cilician Armenia. Thus, Poland saw the nearly simultaneous arrival of Armenians using the Latin liturgy under Roman Catholic structures and those practicing the Armenian rite under their own bishop, who began organizing a church recognizing the obedience of the Cilician (and later Etchmiadzin) catholicoses.

Between 1369 and 1378, another Armenian Catholic monk, Jacob, titled Bishop of Kyiv, is documented as active in Poland. He was the only Catholic hierarch in the Rus’ territories under Polish rule, residing at the Monastery of the Uniate Brethren at the Church of St. John the Baptist in Lviv, first mentioned in 1371. The village of Khodorivka near Lviv, donated by a certain Peter, belonged to the monastery’s monks. Recent archaeological work uncovered a stone khachkar (cross-stone) in the Church of St. John the Baptist, evidence of 14th-century Armenian Catholic practices. Bishop Jacob was buried in the Dominican monastery in Lviv. According to Dominican tradition, Stephen of Lviv, the Latin Bishop of Chełm (1383), was also Armenian.

The earliest known lay Armenian Catholic in Poland is the aforementioned Peter, donor of the village to the Lviv uniate brethren. Other names appear in a 1375 papal privilege for Lviv townspeople: Anna (wife of John Niger), John (Iwanis) the Wealthy, John Belitz, Catherine (his wife), and Sergius (Syrkis). In 1376, a wealthy Armenian merchant from Lviv, Taychadin, made a will in Bishop Jacob’s presence, bequeathing sums to Catholic churches in Lviv and Kaffa. In 1380, another merchant, Chenkisz, donated the village of Kozielniki to the Lviv Franciscans. In 1393, an Armenian woman, Magdalena, left a house in Lviv to the Dominican nuns. Catholic Armenians—such as the goldsmith Stephen and John (sons of Archibey), Yolbey, Karakbey, Emin, his wife Beymelik, son-in-law Choban, Agop, Abyshka (son of Kokty), the cobbler Iwanis, Julian, the translator Yurko Kork, the weaver Franzko, Nicholas Krzywonos, Mungilbey, Murat, the barber Nycros, Peter One-Eye, the minter Iwanis the Wealthy and his children (Awakbaron, John, Peter), his son-in-law (Awakbaron, son of Nekomat), another minter Bogdan and his son Jacob, and the merchant Hanuszko Syrkis—held prominent positions in Lviv. They owned homes in the market square, shops in the wealthy stalls, leased the mint producing coins with King Władysław Jagiełło’s name and the Polish eagle, and served as city councilors. Hanuszko Syrkis even became mayor of Lviv.

The second, though far less numerous, center of Armenian Catholicism in Poland at this time was the capital, Kraków. Sometime after 1370, Brother Jacob Sargis, a uniate from Buda in Hungary, arrived there, as evidenced by his copying of a manuscript in the liturgical Armenian language (grabar) in Kraków. He likely belonged to the entourage of Poland’s new king, Louis, or his mother, Regent Elizabeth Łokietkówna. Kraków’s Armenian Catholic townspeople from the late 14th and early 15th centuries included the goldsmith Antoni and the brassworkers, brothers Janusz and Leonard, along with their families.

The fall of the Cilician Armenian state (1375) undermined the Holy See’s authority in the Armenian world, as it failed to prevent the collapse. Consequently, the Cilician Church gradually turned away from Rome, and liturgical reforms from the early part of the century were reversed.

From the mid-15th century, the Armenian diaspora on the Black Sea (Crimea) and in the Kingdom of Poland (Lviv, Kamianets-Podilskyi) took over Cilicia’s role in maintaining Armenian ties with the Catholic world. Under their pressure, Catholicos Constantine VI and Gregory II, the Armenian Bishop of Lviv, granted a delegation from Crimea authority to represent their Churches at the Union Council of Florence (1439). The Armenian delegation accepted the Decretum pro Armenis, outlining the terms for uniting the Armenian Church with Rome. The document was approved by the next catholicos, Gregory IX.

News of the Florence events sparked outrage among Armenians in the East opposed to ties with Rome, and the union was decisively rejected there. This led to the revival of the Etchmiadzin catholicosate (1441), rivaling the Cilician catholicosate in Sis, deepening the schism within the Armenian Church. Alongside the two catholicosates (the Great House of Cilicia and Etchmiadzin of All Armenians), two others existed: Aghtamar (from 1113) and Caucasian Albania (from antiquity). Additionally, two patriarchates emerged—Jerusalem and Constantinople. Beyond their authority were Orthodox (Chalcedonian) Armenians and Catholics. The latter rallied around the archbishops of Nakhichevan, chosen from local Dominicans (the Congregation of Uniate Brethren was incorporated into the Dominican Order in 1583) and confirmed and consecrated in Rome. Meanwhile, the Armenian Basilians in Italy evolved into the Bartolomite Order, gradually becoming fully Italianized.

In subsequent centuries, a sentiment toward Rome also emerged among the rivals of the Cilician catholicoses—the Etchmiadzin catholicoses. Until the early 18th century, they sought recognition from Rome as Catholic patriarchs. While these efforts were driven by political calculations—hopes for Western financial and military aid in the struggle for Armenian independence—they also held ideological value. Armenians sought to renew the legendary pact between Gregory the Illuminator and Pope Sylvester and the supposed ancient ties of the Armenian Church with Rome’s bishops. In 1549, Etchmiadzin Catholicos Stepanos V Salmasteci appeared in Rome, acknowledging papal primacy and accepting the Decretum pro Armenis from Florence. He died in Poland and was buried in Lviv (1552) before returning to Armenia. Subsequent Etchmiadzin catholicoses sent delegations to Rome with letters recognizing papal jurisdiction and professions of faith, including Michael I (1564–1570), Gregory XII (1574–1587), and Melchizedek (1593–1627). This direction was supported by Cilician catholicoses Khachatur II (1575) and Azarias I (1585).

The Holy See tried to accommodate these overtures but lacked the political capacity at the time. Pope Clement VIII envisioned an anti-Turkish crusade to liberate Eastern Christians, attempting to involve Persian Shah Abbas, who could attack the Ottoman Empire from the east. Between 1593 and 1599, Archbishop Hagop Amdecy traveled to the West eight times as a legate from Etchmiadzin to Venice, Rome, and Vienna. Catholicos Melchizedek, who died in Poland and was buried in Kamianets-Podilskyi (1627), did not live to see the results.

A new era in relations between the Holy See and Eastern Churches began with the establishment of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in 1622, tasked with coordinating missionary efforts to unite Eastern Christians, including Armenians, with the Catholic Church. Earlier (1600–1620), Jesuit and Capuchin missions, supported by French kings, arrived in Constantinople, Smyrna, and Aleppo. Theatines, Dominicans, and Franciscans also worked among Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

During this period, Etchmiadzin Catholicoses Movses III (1628–1633) and Jacob IV (1655–1680), along with Cilician Catholicos Khachatur III (1665), continued efforts to establish unity with the Holy See. Catholic Armenians and their sympathizers energetically supported these endeavors. Jacob IV’s visit to Rome was prepared by Bedros Bedig of Aleppo, but the catholicos died in Constantinople. On his deathbed—not for political reasons—he professed the Catholic faith. Another Catholic Armenian, Constantine Soliman, Count de Syri, an envoy of Emperor Leopold I and Polish King John III Sobieski, worked to enlist the Persian shah in the anti-Turkish Holy League. Catholicoses Nahapet I (1691–1705), Astvatsatur I (1717–1725), and Karapet II (1726–1729) participated in this effort, as did some Cilician catholicoses: Gregory III (1690) and John (1718).

In the 17th century, the first local Armenian Church united with the Holy See emerged. During his stay in Poland, Catholicos Melchizedek consecrated Nicholas Torosowicz, a descendant of a wealthy local Armenian family, as Bishop of Lviv. In 1630, Bishop Torosowicz professed the Catholic faith. A few years later, he traveled to Rome, where in 1635 he was confirmed in office, granted the title of archbishop, and received approval for the Armenian rite. Armenians in Poland, Lithuania, and Moldavia were placed under his authority. In 1664, Theatines led by Father Clemente Galano settled in Lviv and opened the Papal College of Alumni the following year, training a new generation of Armenian clergy deeply committed to the Catholic faith. The Theatines popularized devotion to their order’s founder, St. Cajetan, among Armenians. In 1687, the next Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Lviv, Vartan Hunanian, appointed Auxentius Verczireski as his vicar in Transylvania. There, too, the union of Armenians with Rome took root, though Lviv lost jurisdiction over them to the local Latin bishop.

In 1690, Armenian nuns at the Lviv cathedral adopted the Benedictine rule, founding an Armenian branch of the order in Poland. In 1689, a synod of Armenian clergy in Lviv declared a break with the Etchmiadzin catholicosate. The Lviv archbishopric was placed directly under the Holy See, where Armenian Catholic affairs in Poland and Hungary fell under the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. The Lviv archbishopric enjoyed considerable autonomy, rare among Latin dioceses. It became standard to elect a coadjutor with the right of succession during the reigning archbishop’s lifetime. In 1711, clergy and laity elected John Tobias Augustynowicz; in 1736, the clergy alone chose Jacob Stephen Augustynowicz. As had been the case since the 14th-century Bishop Gregory the Great, Armenian Catholic archbishops of Lviv were confirmed by Polish kings.

The world’s first printed Armenian book appeared in 1512 in the Catholic West. Hagop Meghapart, an Armenian living in Venice, received papal permission to establish an Armenian printing press there. His first publication, Urpatagirk (Friday Book)—a collection of prayers, Gospel excerpts, and writings of Armenian Church Fathers—featured a portrait of the Pope.

Another Armenian printer, Abgar of Tokat, also received papal permission (from Pius IV) to print Armenian books. In his Calendar, printed in Venice in 1565, he included an engraving depicting himself holding Armenian type alongside his son Sultanshah, standing before the Pope and cardinals. He repeated this scene in his next book, the Psalter (1565/1566). His son, known as Marcantonio Armeno, completed his education in Rome, was ordained a priest, and took the monastic name Bartolomeo Abgaro. In 1579, the Pope appointed him superior of the Armenian Monastery of St. Mary of Egypt on the Tiber. The hospice there became a refuge for Armenian clergy visiting Rome for pilgrimage or fleeing persecution in the East. Father Bartolomeo was commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to cast Armenian type, executed by French typefounder Robert Granjon, which became the prototype for today’s most widespread Armenian font. In 1586, he published a fragment of the Armenian ritual (mashtots). Until 1622, Father Bartolomeo served as the Pope’s translator and advisor on Armenian affairs, corresponding with Catholicos Azaria of Sis (who requested a printed Armenian Bible from Pope Gregory XIII), Thaddeus II, and Patriarch David of Jerusalem. His efforts gave rise to an Italian school of Armenology, producing figures like linguist Francesco Rivola, who taught Eastern languages at Milan’s Ambrosian Library.

Father Bartolomeo collaborated with printer John Terzinci of Baghesh. With his son Khachatur, Terzinci published an Armenian Gregorian calendar and Confession of the True Faith in 1584, followed by a Psalter in Venice in 1587. He later worked in Marseille, translating The History of Parez and Venna into Armenian.

In the 17th century, about 30 Armenian books were printed in Rome, mostly by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith’s press. These included a grammar of the Armenian language (1623), a history of the Armenian Church by Father Clemente Galano—a Theatine missionary in the East and Poland—written from a Catholic perspective (1650), and a Latin-Armenian dictionary by Deodat Nersesowicz, an Armenian from Poland and later suffragan of Lviv (1695).

Armenian Catholic communities also emerged in the Ottoman Empire. In 1701, Mechitar of Sebastea founded a new order based on the Rule of St. Benedict (translated into Armenian in the 12th century by Archbishop Nerses of Lambron of Tarsus); named Mechitarists after its founder. Around the same time, brothers Abraham and Jacob Muradian established the Antonian Order in Lebanon’s mountains. Their first monastery was built in Kerem near Beirut (1716), with its rule approved by Pope Clement XII (1732). The rise of Armenian Catholicism provoked strong opposition from advocates of full ecclesiastical separation. In 1707, Father Komitas Kumurdjian was murdered by them (beatified in 1929). In 1719, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith established a vicariate of the Armenian Catholic rite in Constantinople. Armenian Catholicism also grew on Crimea, which Pope Benedict XIV placed under the Lviv Armenian archbishops in 1748.

In 1740, Abraham Ardzivian, Archbishop of Aleppo, was elected catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia in Kerem, a position long vacant. After his election, he traveled to Rome, professed the Catholic faith, and was confirmed by Pope Benedict XIV (1742) as Bedros (Peter) I. Since then, all subsequent Armenian Catholic catholicoses (patriarchs) have taken the name Bedros, up to the current Nerses Bedros XIX. The catholicosate’s (patriarchate’s) seat was eventually established at the Bzommar Monastery in Lebanon, where a seminary was founded in 1759. Its patriarchal authority extended to Armenian Catholic communities in Cilicia, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and, from 1769, the provinces of Tokat and Perkenik in Asia Minor. The Constantinople vicariate remained separate, while Armenians on the Caucasus were initially under a Capuchin mission prefect and, from 1748, a delegate of Constantinople’s apostolic vicar based in Akhaltsikhe.

After the first partition of Poland (1772), most parishes of the Lviv Armenian Catholic archdiocese fell under Austrian rule in the new province of Galicia. Austrian authorities closed the Theatine seminary (1784), sending its students to a Latin seminary, abolished several parishes, and limited the number of clergy. The Armenian Benedictine nuns avoided dissolution due to their girls’ school. Parishes in former Poland that fell under Russian rule were reorganized into a separate diocese based in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, led by Bishop Joseph Krzysztofowicz (1809) as apostolic vicar of Armenians in Russia. No successors were appointed after his death (1816).

The Armenian Catholic rite in Austrian Galicia also faced the threat of liquidation when the Vienna government offered Archbishop Samuel Cyril Stefanowicz (1831–1858) the position of Latin Archbishop of Lviv. He not only resisted but took steps to preserve the rite, gaining jurisdiction over Armenian Catholics in neighboring Bukovina in 1832. In a 1842 report to Rome, he estimated 8,000 faithful in 10 parishes. Restrictions on clergy numbers led many Armenians to pursue vocations in the Latin rite, though they retained their heritage and sometimes rose to prominence in the Polish Church (e.g., Jesuit Karol Antoniewicz, religious writer; Franciszek Ksawery Zachariasiewicz, Bishop of Przemyśl and author of A Report on Armenians in Poland; Dominican Sadok Barącz, historian of Armenians in Poland and author of Lives of Famous Armenians in Poland and Outline of Armenian History).

In 1861, a debate arose among Polish Armenians in Galicia over the purpose of maintaining a separate rite. Isaac Nicholas Isakowicz, an Armenian vicar in Stanisławów, staunchly defended it. In 1869, Archbishop Gregory Szymonowicz attended Vatican I, supporting papal infallibility. His successor, Gregory Romaszkan, consecrated a new Armenian church in Chernivtsi in 1879 dedicated to St. Gregory the Illuminator, and in 1891, Archbishop Isaac Isakowicz established an Armenian Catholic parish in Suceava, Bukovina. The 1902 consecration of Joseph Teodorowicz as the new Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Lviv marked a new chapter. He revitalized the Polish Armenian community and restored their greatest treasure, the Lviv Cathedral.

The Mechitarist Order established two key centers for Armenian Catholicism in Europe: Vienna and Venice. These became hubs for studying the Armenian Church’s traditions and Christian cultural heritage. Notable Mechitarists—Mikajel Chamchian (1738–1823), Aucherian Mykyrticz (Aucher, 1762–1854), Bagradun Arsen (1790–1866), Ghewond Alishan (1820–1901), Ajdinian Arsen (1824–1902), and others—revived theology, patristics, hagiography, history, and Armenian lyric poetry. The Venice Mechitarists publish the scholarly-religious journal Pasmaveb, while those in Vienna have issued Handes Amsorya since 1887.

Following a sultan’s decree allowing all Catholics in Turkey to form a separate millet, Pope Pius VIII established the Armenian Archbishopric of Constantinople in 1830 with the title of primate. In 1850, six new Armenian bishoprics were created in Turkey. However, the emergence of a rival ecclesiastical center to the Bzommar catholicosate (patriarchate) in the imperial capital led to jurisdictional disputes.

In the late 19th century, Anthony Hassun (1809–1884)—first suffragan, then Archbishop of Constantinople—played a major role in Armenian Catholicism’s growth in Turkey. In 1852, he founded the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception to educate girls. In 1867, when the Constantinople archbishopric merged with the catholicosate, he assumed the latter role and was made a cardinal in 1880. Through his efforts, Pope Leo XIII established the Pontifical Armenian College in Rome (1883) to train Armenian-rite priests.

The same Pope authorized pastoral centers for the diaspora in North America (the first in New York in 1896) and intervened with the Turkish government to protect persecuted Armenians (1892–1896). In 1911, the Holy See moved the catholicos’s seat to Rome, a decision debated at a synod attended by Archbishop Teodorowicz.

During the Armenian Genocide (1915–1918) by Turkey, 14 Catholic dioceses were destroyed, and 7 bishops, 130 priests, 47 nuns, and up to 100,000 faithful perished. Among the victims was Ignatius Maloyan, Archbishop of Mardin, later beatified.

The revival of Armenian Catholicism in the Lviv archdiocese peaked in interwar Poland. A new ministry began in the reborn Poland’s capital, Warsaw. In 1927, the first Polish Armenian periodical, Messenger of St. Gregory, was published in Lviv. In 1930, the Archdiocesan Armenian Union was founded, based in Lviv but with branches in new Armenian centers—Warsaw, Łódź, and Poznań. A 1932 exhibit of historical artifacts in Lviv launched the Archdiocesan Armenian Museum. In 1935, another periodical, Gregoriana, appeared. This prosperity was short-lived. In 1938, Archbishop Teodorowicz—one of the era’s most prominent figures in Poland—died. The Holy See did not appoint a successor, despite the Armenian clergy’s traditional election of Father Dionizy Kajetanowicz as a candidate, who managed the archdiocese as capitular vicar.

The outbreak of World War II and the Soviet occupation of Lviv in September 1939 ended this brief religious renaissance. Both Soviet and German occupiers persecuted clergy and faithful. Armenian Catholic clergy notably aided Jews during the Holocaust by issuing them false certificates as Armenian-rite Catholics. Postwar border changes and migrations erased the archdiocese’s historic territory, now entirely within Soviet Ukraine. Faithful relocated to western Poland. The last Armenian Benedictine abbess from Lviv, Elekta Orłowska, moved with 10 sisters to Lubiń in Greater Poland. In 1958, they settled with Latin Benedictines in Wołów, merging with them in 1961.

Despite dispersal, clergy imprisonment in Soviet gulags (including Vicar Kajetanowicz), and loss of material resources and churches, postwar Polish Armenian Catholics fought to preserve their rite. Successive Polish primates—Cardinals August Hlond, Stefan Wyszyński, and Józef Glemp—oversaw them. New pastoral centers emerged, initially without parish status. In Kraków, Father Franciszek Jakubowicz worked; in Gliwice, Father Kazimierz Roszko, later joined by Father Kazimierz Romaszkan (freed from the Soviet Union and named dean by Cardinal Wyszyński), then Father Krzysztof Staniecki; in Gdańsk, Father Kazimierz Filipiak served.

Under Pope John Paul II, the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern Churches addressed the Armenian rite in Poland more actively. The Pontifical Armenian College trained Polish candidates for the priesthood. In 1985, Father Filipiak became Cardinal Glemp’s vicar general for the Armenian rite. In 1992, Cardinal Glemp established a personal parish in Gliwice covering all of Poland, initially led by Father Józef Kowalczyk (rector of Gliwice’s Armenian church since 1985), succeeded by Father Artur Awdalian in 2004. That year, Cardinal Glemp appointed Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski as southern Poland’s Armenian pastor (serving Kraków’s archdiocese since 2001) and Father Artur Awdalian for the north. In 1999, an Armenian personal parish was established in Gdańsk under Father Cezary Annusewicz. Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, Warsaw’s archbishop, dissolved prior pastoral structures in 2009, creating three territorial parishes: southern (Gliwice, Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski), central (Warsaw, Father Artur Awdalian, replaced by Father Rafał Krawczyk in 2013), and northern (Gdańsk, Father Cezary Annusewicz).

After World War II, Catholicoses Ignatius Peter XV (Agadjanian) and Ignatius Peter XVI (Batanian) expanded Armenian Catholic structures, establishing an archdiocese in Baghdad (Iraq) and a diocese in Kamichlie (Syria) in 1954, and patriarchal vicariates in Damascus (an exarchate since 1984) and Jerusalem (an exarchate since 1991) in 1974. Exarchates emerged in France (diocese of Sainte-Croix de Paris since 1986), Latin America and Mexico (diocese of San Gregorio de Narek in Buenos Aires since 1989), and the U.S. and Canada (diocese of Our Lady of Narek since 2005).

Rapprochement between Rome and Etchmiadzin resumed. In 1967, Catholicos Khoren I of the Great House of Cilicia and, in 1970, Etchmiadzin Catholicos Vazgen I visited Pope Paul VI, sending observers to Vatican II. In 1996, John Paul II and Catholicos Karekin I signed a joint Christological declaration, as did the Pope and Cilician Catholicos Aram I in 1997, though some Armenian bishops reject it. John Paul II visited Karekin II in Armenia in 2001, and Karekin II visited Benedict XVI in Rome in 2008.

After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Catholic communities revived in Armenia, Georgia, and Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Sochi). In 1991, the Holy See created the Ordinariate for Eastern Europe in Gyumri, with 39 parishes, 5 diocesan priests, 6 religious priests, 17 monks, and 14 nuns serving 540,000 faithful. Priests are trained at the catholicos’s seminary in Beirut, Roman Catholic seminaries in Tbilisi (Georgia) and Kazakhstan, and the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland. A minor Armenian seminary opened in Gyumri (northern Armenia) in 1994.

By 2009, there were 5 archdioceses, 6 dioceses, 1 apostolic exarchate, 3 patriarchal exarchates, 3 rite ordinariates, and 103 Armenian Catholic parishes worldwide, served by 45 diocesan priests, 38 religious priests, 60 monks, and 84 nuns, with over 684,000 faithful.