Choir I.

Chorus I of Armenia

His tombstone

Choren I of Armenia ( Armenian Խորեն Ա Տփղիսեցի Մուրադբեկյան Xorēn Muradbēkean ; bourgeois Aleksandr Howhannes Muradbekjan Ալեքսանդր Հովհաննեսի Մուրադբեկյան, * December 8, 1873 in Tbilisi , Russian Empire , † April 6, 1938 in Etschmiadzin , Armenian SSR ) was from 1932 to 1938 the Catholicos of the entire Armenian Apostolic Church and victim of the Great Terror under Joseph Stalin . He is buried near the Mother Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin .

Life

Choren attended the Nersesian Academy in Tbilisi and taught there. In 1900 he received his doctorate in wardapet and in 1910 he was ordained bishop. After the death of Katholikos Gework V on May 9, 1930, the patriarchal seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church remained vacant for two years under pressure from the Soviet dictator Stalin. However, when the state attacks on the church temporarily stopped in order to improve relations between the Soviet Union and the Armenian diaspora , Alexander Muradbekyan was appointed "His Holiness the Catholicos of All Armenians " on November 10, 1932 .

With the start of the Great Purges in the late 1930s, the Soviet government again manifested its anti-church stance from 1935. After only 6 years in office, Katholikos Choren was strangled on April 6, 1938 by agents of the NKVD . In the course of his assassination, the Echmiadzin Catholic Church was closed by the communist authorities on August 4, 1938 , and the Church only lived on in the underground and in the diaspora. Officially, it was claimed that Choren I. died of a stroke. A funeral service was banned. In 2006 the Armenian Apostolic Church declared him a martyr.

This time the seat remained vacant for seven years until 1945.

Web links

Commons : Khoren I Muradbekyan  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mary Allerton Kilbourne Matossian: Impact of Soviet policies in Armenia , 1962, page 149th
2. ↑ Mary Allerton Kilbourne Matossian: Impact of Soviet policies in Armenia , 1962, page 161st
3. ^ Tessa Hofmann: Persecution of Christians in Armenia (1894–1941). The synergy of nationalist genocide and Stalinist religious suppression, in: Plasger / Stobbe (ed.): Violence against Christians , Leipzig 2014, pages 159-179, page 179.

predecessor	Office	successor
George V.	Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church 1932–1938	George VI.