Vazgen I

Vazgen I also Vazken I of Bucharest (Armenian: Վազգէն Ա Բուխարեստցի), born Levon Garabed Baljian (Լևոն Կարապետ Աբրահամի Պալճյան; September 20, 1908 – August 18, 1994)^[1] was the Catholicos of All Armenians between 1955 and 1994, for a total of 39 years, the 4th longest reign in the history of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

His Holiness, National Hero of Armenia Vazgen / Vazken I Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians
Church	Armenian Apostolic Church
See	Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin
Installed	1955
Term ended	1994
Predecessor	George VI
Successor	Karekin I
Personal details
Born	Levon Garabed Baljian (1908-09-20)September 20, 1908 Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania
Died	(1994-08-18)August 18, 1994 (aged 85) Yerevan, Armenia
Buried	Mother Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin
Nationality	Armenian

A native of Romania, he began his career as a philosopher, before becoming a Doctor of Theology and a member of the local Armenian clergy. The leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church hierarchy in Romania, he became Catholicos in 1955, moving to Soviet Armenia. Vazgen I led the Armenian Church during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and was the first Catholicos in newly independent Armenia.

Biography

Vazgen was born in Bucharest to a family belonging to the Armenian-Romanian community. His father was a shoemaker and his mother was a schoolteacher. The young Levon Baljian did not initially pursue the Church as a profession, instead graduating from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. After graduation, he became a philosopher and published a series of scholarly articles.

As his interests began to shift from philosophy to theology, Baljian studied Armenian Apostolic Theology and Divinity in Athens, Greece. He eventually gained the title of vardapet, an ecclesiastical rank for learned preachers and teachers in the Armenian Apostolic Church roughly equivalent to receiving a doctorate in theology. In the 1940s, he became a bishop, and then the arajnord (leader) of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Romania.

His rise through the hierarchy of the Church culminated in 1955 when, on September 30, 1955, he was elected Catholicos of All Armenians, becoming one of the youngest Catholicoi in the history of the Armenian Apostolic Church. During his tenure as Catholicos, Vazgen managed to assert some independence for his church under Soviet rule. In May 1956, he unsuccessfully appealed to Nikolai Bulganin for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Soviet Armenia.^[2] In 1965, he attended the Conference of Addis Ababa, in order to strengthen ties to the other Miaphysite churches.

Vazgen lived to see the independence of Armenia in 1991 and the restoration of religious freedom in the republic. From then on, he was busy renewing ancient Armenian churches and reviving institutions of the church. He saved a number of church treasures by establishing the Alex Manoogian Museum of the Mother Church. He also intensified contacts with the Armenian Catholic Church, with the aim of reuniting both wings of Armenian Christianity.

Vasily Grossman wrote that he sensed "nothing fanatical" about Vazgen, describing him as "intelligent, educated, and worldly," with "an enlightened worldliness" being "his most striking quality." However, he also found him to be "unremarkable."^[3]

Vazgen served as Catholicos until his death in Yerevan on August 18, 1994, after a long illness from cancer.^[4]

Gallery

• 
  Meeting of Vazgen I and David V, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Yerevan, October 1972.
• 
  Architectural Commission of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin (1970–1988). First row from left: Varazdat Harutyunyan, Vazgen I, K. Altunyan Second row from left: Baghdasar Arzoumanian, H. Babakhanian, Grigor Khanjyan, A. Galikyan, M. Hovhannisyan
• 
  Vazgen I on an Armenian postage stamp
• 
  Statue in front of Vazgen I Elementary School in Vanadzor
• 
  Statue in a park in Echmiadzin
• 
  Vazgen I's tombstone

Awards

• National Hero of Armenia (28.07.1994) — for exceptional services in preserving and enhancing national and spiritual values
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (09.19.1988) — for peacekeeping activities and in connection with the eightieth anniversary of his birth
• Order of Friendship of Peoples (09.19.1978) — for patriotic activities in defense of peace and in connection with the seventieth anniversary of his birth
• Order of the Badge of Honor (09.19.1968) — for great patriotic activity in defense of peace and in connection with the sixtieth anniversary of his birth
• Order of the Star of the Romanian Socialist Republic (1952)
• Gold Peace Medal named after Frederic Joliot-Curie (1962) – for his great contribution to the promotion of peace
• Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee (1968)

External links

• Audio recording with Vazgen I in the Online Archive of the Österreichische Mediathek (Interview in German and Armenian). Retrieved 18 September 2019