On June 15, Catholicossal Vicar of the Armenian Diocese of Greece, His Grace, Fr. Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian visited the Ministry of Diaspora of the Republic of Armenia.

Greeting the guest, Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan highly appreciated His Holiness Gomidas’s spiritual services in the Armenian Diaspora. “Father Gomidas was born in Aleppo, which is considered a center for care, love and warmth for us Armenians. Later, he moved to Lebanon where he studied at the Dprevank Seminary of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia. His Holiness Gomidas is also talented. He studied at the European Music Conservatory in Lebanon, after which he specialized in ritual studies and ecclesiastical architecture and was conferred the ranking of a Doctor of University Education. This is how I can briefly present His Grace, Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian. However, he is first and foremost a person of mind and soul. He has assumed the greatest mission to serve people, and wherever he has gone, he has always been loved and respected,” Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan.

The Minister also emphasized that His Grace, Archbishop Gomidas conveyed air and spirit to the Armenian community of Venezuela while serving as the spiritual superintendent of the Armenians of Venezuela between 1997 and 2005 and between 2012 and 2016 and made his contributions to Venezuela’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide. “As the current Catholicossal Vicar of the Armenian Diocese of Greece, His Grace, Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian makes the Armenian community of Greece more vibrant, instills faith in difficult situations, gives our compatriots hope and fosters preservation and awareness of the Armenian identity,” the Minister mentioned.

Minister Hranush Hakobyan also awarded His Grace, Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian with the Komitas Medal of the RA Ministry of Diaspora for disseminating Armenian arts in the Diaspora, for his high mastery of creating and performing and for making his considerable contributions to the development of the Armenia-Diaspora partnership.

“Father Gomidas must be awarded with the Komitas Medal since Komitas was the king of Armenian thinking, our pride and the symbol of the identity of our nation. One gets the impression that Father Gomidas and Komitas Vardapet met today,” Hranush Hakobyan emphasized.

The Catholicossal Vicar of the Armenian Diocese of Greece expressed gratitude for the cordial reception and the award. “First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for this sincere and unforgettable appreciation. In the reality in Armenia, the Ministry of Diaspora serves as the spiritual bridge, a strong vein of the heart that ensures the flow of Armenians from Armenia to the Diaspora and vice versa. Today, the relations between Armenia and the Diaspora are very viable, and this is thanks to the Ministry of Diaspora of the Republic of Armenia and Minister Hranush Hakobyan, for whom this task is not merely a job and obligation, but something that makes her work with pleasure and spiritually,” His Grace, Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian.

At the end of the meeting, Father Gomidas gifted an icon to Minister Hranush Hakobyan.