Ambassador Armenia: statue of St. Gregory of Narek is a symbol of brotherhood, Armenia’s Ambassador Mikayel Minasyan told Vatican News, as he commented on the upcoming inauguration of the statue in the Vatican Gardens.
The ceremony will take place in the presence, among others, of Pope Francis and the President of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan.
The work, created by artist David Erevantsi, is reproduced in two copies: one for the Vatican Gardens and the other for the gardens of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin.
“St. Gregory of Narek,” he said, “is a bridge. He is the bridge between the Armenian Church and Catholic Church. He is a bridge between our two realities, and very importantly, he’s a bridge two worlds: the Armenian world and the Western world. He is a bridge between East and West. He is bridge between land and sky,” Mikayel Minasyan said.
“St. Gregory of Narek is the author of the spiritual constitution of Armenia and the Armenian people. He is the symbol of our culture, which is, at one time, an Armenian, international and Christian culture,” Ambassador Minasyan told CNA.
The Ambassador said that “St. Gregory of Narek is a real ecumenical doctor of the Church, since he was not a Catholic and has never been a member of the Roman Catholic Church.”
He added that “St. Gregory of Narek is the symbol of the ecumenism of blood, and the symbol of our destruction and genocide, since even the Narek monastery, where he lived, was destroyed, as was as his tomb, during the Armenian genocide.”
