Gregorio Pietro Agagianian


Gregorio Pietro XV Agagianian was an Armenian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was the head of the Armenian Catholic Church from 1937 to 1962 and supervised the Catholic Church's missionary work for more than a decade, until his retirement in 1970. He was considered papabile on two occasions.
Educated in Tiflis and Rome, Agagianian first served as leader of the Armenian Catholic community of Tiflis before the Bolshevik takeover of the Caucasus in 1921. He then moved to Rome, where he first taught and then headed the Pontifical Armenian College until 1937 when he was elected to lead the Armenian Catholic Church, which he revitalized after major losses the church had experienced during the Armenian Genocide.
Agagianian was elevated to the cardinalate in 1946 by Pope Pius XII. He was Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith from 1958 to 1970. Theologically a moderate, a linguist, and an authority on the Soviet Union, he served as one of the four moderators at the Second Vatican Council and was twice considered a serious papal candidate, during the conclaves of 1958 and 1963.

Early life and priesthood

Agagianian was born Ghazaros Aghajanian on September 18, 1895 in the city of Akhaltsikhe, in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire—in present-day Samtskhe-Javakheti province of Georgia. At the time, around 60% of city's 15,000 inhabitants were Armenians. His family was part of the Catholic minority of Javakhk Armenians, most of whom were followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church. His ancestors came from Erzurum in the aftermath of a Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829. Fleeing Ottoman persecution, they sought refuge in the Russian Caucasus. He lost his father, Harutiun, at an early age.
He attended the Russian Orthodox Tiflis Seminary and then the Pontifical Urban University in Rome in 1906. His outstanding performance in the latter was noted by Pope Pius X, who told young Agagianian: "You will be a priest, a bishop, and a patriarch." He was ordained priest in Rome on December 23, 1917. Despite the upheaval bought by the Russian Revolution, he thereafter served as a parish priest in Tiflis and then as the head of the city's Armenian Catholic community from 1919. He left for Rome in 1921 when Georgia was invaded by the Red Army and did not see his family until 1962, when his sister Elizaveta traveled to Rome through the intervention of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
In 1921, Agagianian became a faculty member and vice-rector of the Pontifical Armenian College in Rome. He later served as rector of the college from 1932 to 1937. He was also a faculty member of the Pontifical Urban University from 1922 to 1932.
Agagianian was appointed titular bishop of :it:Diocesi di Comana di Armenia|Comana di Armenia on July 11, 1935 and was ordained bishop on July 21, 1935 at the San Nicola da Tolentino Church in Rome. His episcopal motto was Iustitia et Pax.

Armenian Catholic Patriarch

On November 30, 1937, Agagianian was elected Patriarch of Cilicia by the synod of bishops of the Armenian Catholic Church, an Eastern particular church sui iuris of the Catholic Church. The election received papal confirmation on December 13, 1937. He took the name Gregory Peter and became the 15th patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church, which had some 100,000 adherents. All Armenian Catholic Patriarchs have Peter in their pontifical name as an expression of allegiance to the church founded by Saint Peter. According to Rouben Paul Adalian, the Armenian Catholic Church regained its stature in the Armenian diaspora under the "astute management" of Agagianian following the sizable losses in the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
Agagianian reportedly played a key role in keeping the Armenian-populated village of Kessab within Syria when Turkey annexed the Hatay State in 1939 by intervening as a representative of the Vatican. Agagianian inaugurated the Armenian Catholic church in Anjar, Lebanon in 1954 and founded a boarding house for orphaned boys there.
He resigned the pastoral governance of the Armenian patriarchate on August 25, 1962 to focus on his duties at the Vatican.

Cardinalate

Agagianan was made Cardinal on February 18, 1946 by Pope Pius XII. He was appointed Cardinal-Priest of San Bartolomeo all'Isola on February 22, 1946.

''Propaganda Fide''

Agagianian was appointed Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith on June 18, 1958 and Prefect on July 18, 1960. As such he supervised the training of Catholic missionaries all over the world. According to Lentz, Agagianian was "largely responsible for liberalizing the church's policies in developing nations." He traveled extensively to the missionary areas for which he was responsible.
In February 1959 Agagianian visited Taiwan to oversee missionary work in the island. He later entrusted Paul Yü Pin, Archbishop of Nanking, to reestablish the Fu Jen Catholic University. He arrived in Japan for a two week long visit in May 1959, which included a meeting with Emperor Hirohito. On December 10, 1959 he presided over the First Far East Conference of Bishops at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines with attendance of 100 prelates, 10 papal representatives, 16 archbishops, 79 bishops from almost every country in the Far East.
His visit to the Republic of Ireland in June 1961 was the highlight of the Patrician Year. Agagianian received a great popular welcome there. Conservative President of Ireland Éamon de Valera was famously pictured kissing Agagianian's ring. In September 1963 he visited South Vietnam and met with Madame Nhu, the Catholic first lady. On October 18, 1964 when the Uganda Martyrs where canonized by Pope Paul VI, Agagianian presided over the Holy Mass at Namugongo. In November 1964 he traveled to Bombay, India to open the 38th Eucharistic Congress.

''Papabile''

As a cardinal, Agagianian participated in the papal conclaves of 1958 and 1963, during which he was considered to have been papabile. According to J. Peter Pham, Agagianian was considered a "serious candidate" for the papacy in both conclaves. Contemporary news sources noted that Agagianian was the first serious non-Italian papal candidate in centuries.

1958 conclave

According to Greg Tobin and Robert J. Wister, Agagianian, known to have been close to Pope Pius XII, was one of the favorites in the 1958 conclave. His candidacy was widely discussed in the press.
Even before the death of Pope Pius XII, The Milwaukee Sentinel wrote that some authoritative voices of Vatican affairs believe that Agagianian was "without question the leading candidate" to succeed Pope Pius XII. On October 9, the day Pope Pius died, The Sentinel wrote that he is "considered by very responsible Vatican circles as the foremost choice" to succeed Pope Pius. The Chicago Tribune wrote on October 25 that although Agagianian was popular amongst believers, the cardinals were expected to try first to agree on an Italian cardinal. The election was seen as a struggle between Italian Angelo Roncalli and non-Italian Agagianian. Agagianian came in second according to Massimo Faggioli and contemporary press reports. Three months after the conclave, Roncalli revealed that his name and that of Agagianian "went up and down like two chickpeas in boiling water" during the conclave. Armenian-American journalist Tom Vartabedian suggests that it is possible that Agagianian might have been elected but declined the post.

1963 conclave

According to John Whooley, an authority on the Armenian Catholic Church, Agagianian was considered "a strong contender, most 'papabile before the 1963 conclave and there was "much expectation" that he would be elected. The conclave instead elected Giovanni Battista Montini, who became Pope Paul VI. According to the Armenian Catholic Church website, Agagianian was rumored to have been actually elected at this conclave but declined to accept. According to speculations by Italian journalists :it:Andrea Tornielli|Andrea Tornielli and Giovanni Bensi Italian intelligence services were involved in preventing Agagianian from being elected pope in 1963. They maintain that SIFAR, the Italian military intelligence service, mounted a smear campaign against Agagianian prior to the conclave by disseminating the narrative that Agagianian's 70-year-old sister, Elizaveta—who had visited Rome a year earlier to meet him—had ties with the Soviet authorities. The Tablet wrote in 1963 that their meeting, which was preceded by negotiations partly conducted by the Italian ambassador in Moscow, "must rank as one of the best-kept diplomatic secrets of all time".

Views

described him as "hardly a strict traditionalist." According to Ralph M. Wiltgen, he was "regarded by the liberals as the most acceptable of the Curial cardinals" in the Second Vatican Council. In 1963 Life magazine called him a liberal, cosmopolitan, and a moderate. He was described as the Catholic Church's "topmost champion of the unity of the Christian churches under the Pope." In 1950 he issued a pastoral letter in which he directly appealed to all Armenians to accept the authority of the Catholic Church.

Second Vatican Council

Agagianian sat on the Board of Presidency of the Second Vatican Council, which took place from 1962 to 1965. He was appointed by Pope Paul VI as one of the four moderators who directed the course of the debates, along with Leo Joseph Suenens, Julius Döpfner, and Giacomo Lercaro. Agagianian was the only one of these four from the Curia, and represented the Eastern Catholic Churches. He had a special role in the preparation of the missionary decree Ad gentes and Gaudium et spes, the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

On the Soviet Union

During his lifetime, Agagianian was considered the Catholic Church's leading expert on communism and the Soviet Union. Norman St John-Stevas wrote 1955 that Agagianian is "uncommitted" in the Cold War. In a January 1958 diplomatic report Marcus Cheke, UK Ambassador to the Holy See, wrote that Agagianian "believes that the best thing for the Western powers to do is to hang on, avoid war and to wait for a transformation inside Russia, which he thinks will happen sooner or later." In contrast, Agagianian called for a "heroically Christian" struggle against communism during his visit to Australia in 1959.
Agagianian opposed the repatriation of Armenian Catholics from the Middle East to Soviet Armenia in 1946. He noted that there was an intolerant environment in the Soviet Union towards religion and argued that "We are forced to remain as emigrants to preserve our church and faith."
;Reception in the Soviet Union
Agagianian's statements regarding repatriation of Armenians were received as defamation and hostile in the Soviet-controlled homeland. In the early 1950s, Etchmiadzin, the Soviet-based official publication of the Armenian Apostolic Church, published articles severely criticizing Agagianian. One article claimed that he was created cardinal in order to "damage the unity" and "disunite" the Armenian people. It also argued that Agagianian also held the "key to submitting the Oriental Orthodox churches of the Middle East to the Catholic Church." In another article, Agagianian was accused in "seek to bring Armenian believers under the control of the Vatican" and make them "anti-national without an ideal and dignity in short, a cosmopolitan crowd, which will serve the Turkish-American war machine."

Retirement and death

Agagianian effectively retired when he resigned as prefect on October 19, 1970, and was appointed Cardinal-Bishop of the Suburbicarian Diocese of Albano on October 22.
Agagianian died of cancer in Rome on May 16, 1971. Pope Paul VI called him a "noble figure" upon Agagianian's death. Vazgen I, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, sent Pope Paul VI a letter mourning Agagianian's death. His funeral took place on May 21 at St. Peter's Basilica. He was buried in Rome's San Nicola da Tolentino Armenian church. There is a monument to Agagianian inside the church, flanked by the virgin martyr Hripsime and St. Vartan.

Reputation

In 1966, Italian journalist Alberto Cavallari wrote that Agagianian is the "undisputed leader of non-European Catholicism. He is regarded by all as one of the most powerful cardinals in the Curia and is invested with autonomous powers equaled by none except the pope." Upon his death, The New York Times wrote that "Despite his failure to win election from the Sacred College of Cardinals, nevertheless made a major impact on the development of the church and its role in the newly developing nations."
Agagianian has been called "the most celebrated Armenian Catholic in history." He was the second Armenian Catholic churchman ever to be made cardinal, after :it:Andon Bedros IX Hassoun|Andon Bedros IX Hassoun in 1880. Since Agagianian spent most of his adult life in Rome, he was "Romanized" and reportedly spoke with a Roman accent. Richard McBrien wrote that Agagianian was "regarded by some, including fellow Eastern-rite Catholics, as more Roman than the Romans." Agagianian was considered to have been bi-ritual as he used both the Armenian and Latin rites. Pope Pius XII, who had a "great interest in the Eastern churches," called on Agagianian to celebrate a pontifical Mass in the Armenian rite in the Sistine Chapel on March 12, 1946.
Agagianian was a polyglot and renowned linguist. He spoke fluent Armenian, Russian, Italian, French, English, and Latin and learned German, Spanish, classical Greek, Arabic. He had "a working knowledge of the Slavic languages and speak most of the languages of the Middle and Far East." He was described as the College of Cardinals' "top linguist" in 1953. Norman St John-Stevas wrote of him in 1955 as "a man of distinguished presence, a fine scholar."

Honors and awards

;Honorary degrees
;State orders and awards