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Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, sent a message of greeting to the new head of the Armenian Catholic Church, His Beatitude Catholicos-Patriarch Krikor Bedros XX. The text of the message is given below.

Your Beatitude,

Please accept my congratulations on your election as new head of the Armenian Catholic Church!

The Lord has willed to entrust you with Primatial ministry in a time of severe tribulations for the Middle East. Today not only the lives of thousands of our innocent brothers and sisters are in danger, at stake is the very existence of Christianity in the land which remembers the Saviour Himself, His Most Pure Mother, Apostles, and many zealots of faith and piety. Hundreds of thousands of people, including the faithful of the Armenian Catholic Church, have already fallen victims to gruesome atrocities: some of them were killed; others were injured or lost their homes and livelihood. Many shrines have been desecrated; churches, monasteries and whole cities have been destroyed.

In the face of this tragedy, Christian Churches are called to actively promote cooperation, bringing closer the triumph of peace, mercy and justice, and acting together to render aid to the suffering brothers. I sincerely hope for the development of good relations established between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Armenian Catholic Church under your predecessor, the late Catholicos-Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX who visited Moscow last May.

I wholeheartedly wish Your Beatitude good health and God’s help in your ministry.

With love in the Lord,

/+Hilarion/

Metropolitan of Volokolamsk

Chairman

Department for External Church Relations

Moscow Patriarchate