"On the Day of Pentecost, the Armenian Apostolic Church ordains 4 new Bishops" by Carlo Coppola
The Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin has announced that on 24 May 2026, on the solemnity of Pentecost — known in the Armenian tradition by the venerable name of Hokegaloust, meaning "the Coming of the Spirit" — four vardapets will receive episcopal ordination in the Mother Cathedral, during the Divine Liturgy presided over by the Catholicos of All Armenians, His Holiness Karekin II.
The vardapet — a celibate monk-priest holding a doctorate in theology, a figure comparable to the Latin Monsignor or the Byzantine Archimandrite — occupies in the Armenian hierarchy the rank immediately preceding the episcopate. It is not an honorary title: it is a condition of life. And to cross that threshold, in this millennial Church, has never been a merely administrative act.
The choice of date speaks for itself. To consecrate new bishops on the very day the Spirit descended upon the Twelve is not custom: it is theological conviction. In the Armenian tradition, the bishop or Primate of a Diocese is not an administrator; he is the living successor of the apostles, guardian of the doctrinal and liturgical unity of a people that has made faith its most ancient shield.
Those who will receive consecration — all members of the Brotherhood of the Mother See, incorporated between 2005 and 2011 — are: Vardapet Isahak Poghosyan, locum tenens of Gegharkunik; Vardapet Ruben Zargaryan, locum tenens of the newly established Diocese of Masyatsotn, erected in 2021; Vardapet Anania Tsaturyan, Grand Sacristan of the Holy See of Etchmiadzin; and Vardapet Zakaria Baghumyan, Director of the Etchmiadzin Centre for Christian Education.
The ceremony, set to begin at 10:30, comes at an hour of no small turbulence: in October 2025, diocesan seats were searched by state authorities, and the Catholicos himself is subject to ongoing investigation. Against this backdrop, the words Father Zargaryan addressed to those who questioned him have taken on the weight of a profession of faith: "The priesthood is the way of the Cross, not of accommodation."
Every new consecration — diaconal, presbyteral, episcopal — is an act of quiet and luminous reaffirmation: the apostolic chain extends itself, in spite of everything, toward the future. To this is added, as a practical mark of dignity, the fact that in the non-Catholic Eastern churches, "Metropolitan Bishops" and "Archbishops" receive more elevated liturgical formulae than those accorded to simple bishops — formulae adapted accordingly under the address of "His Eminence."
To Their Eminences who will today be elevated to the episcopal rank, and in particular to Mons. Ruben Zargaryan — whom we knew personally when he was a student of Biblical Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, a young monk of keen intellect and unwavering spirit — we offer our most heartfelt congratulations on an episcopal consecration long awaited by many. He was then a gifted student; later a profound scholar; today, a bishop. Even then, one sensed the fragrance of the Holy Spirit about him. His ordination does not surprise us. It moves us.
