Page 47 - THE ARMENIAN CHURCH_Neat

48 The Armenian Church

Turkish Empire was depopulated of all Ar-
menians, except for a small community in
Constantinople.
In his memoirs, Catholicos Sahak II de-
scribed how orders came from the Turkish
authorities to evacuate the Catholicosate,
the headquarters of the Armenian Church
in Sis, and how it was then assaulted and
destroyed by Turkish troops. He wrote:
"Goodbye eight hundred year old Catholicosal
See…." The last catholicos in Sis, Cilicia
became, in his own words, a "roaming catho-
licos," like his flock, in exile, moving from Sis
to Adana, Jerusalem, Damascus, Aleppo,
Beirut, Cyprus, and finally, in 1930, estab-
lishing the centuries-old Catholicosate of
Cilicia in Antelias, Lebanon. Even today the
descendants of the genocide sing the hymn
of the Catholicosate of Cilicia: "I wish to see
my Cilicia, the country that gave me the sun..."
with tears in their eyes….
Out of the genocide emerged the world-
wide Armenian diaspora.

Soviet Armenia and
the Armenian Diaspora
The Armenian Church was strongly
marked by three phenomena in the 20th
Century: the genocide, the sovietization of
Eastern Armenia, and the emergence of a
worldwide diaspora. Sadly, Soviet Armenia