The Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is located in Kumkapı neighborhood of Constantinople, was renovated a few years ago, after the earthquake that took place in 1999.
Another event organized in the framework of the project called Support for Turkey-Armenia Rapprochement (SATR) of Eurasia Partnership Foundation and the Global Political Trends Center (GPoT) that organizes fortnight bus tours for Armenian and Turkish journalists around cities and towns of Turkey and Armenia started in Istanbul, more precisely, from the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Deacon Vagharshak Serobyan who has worked at the Patriarchate for many years and now is responsible for press and Patriarch Hovhannes the Short Museum mockingly remembered how the nails of the Patriarchate’s wooden construction had squeaked, when 13 years ago the ground was slipping from under Istanbul’s “feet,” “Admittedly, it didn’t collapse, since the building is wooden and that is our advantage, since the building quaked and shook, but nothing happened. At night, when the quake started, I heard that the nails inside the wood were coming out and going in, but nothing happened.”
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Nonetheless, there were problems with the foundation of the building, therefore, it was decided to overhaul it thoroughly. As a result of the three-and-a-half-year work, the Patriarchate’s building is completely renovated. As the deacon said, “since the building was of first-degree antiquity, thanks to the ministry, it was not decided to dismantle the building and to reconstruct, they just took out the wooden planks and repaired the inner wooden planks and covered them again.”
The deacon informed that the congregation of the patriarchate was 70-75 thousand people, the majority of whom are inIstanbul. There are manifold big and small communities also in different regions, for example, in Sebastia,Malatya,Ankara, villages of theBlack Seacoast etc. There are also churches in Anatolia, where there are no communities and the other way around, there are communities inAnatolia, like Sebastia, which don’t have churches. Nonetheless, there are 38 churches inConstantinople, another 7 in the regions. Besides 38 churches, there are 17 colleges inIstanbul, twenty or more Armenian unions, two dailies, one weekly and one monthly, they have famousSurbPrkichHospital,ZoravorArmenianCatholicHospital.
Talking about the churches, Deacon Vagharshak Serobyan said that during the Ottoman rule, the Patriarchate of Constantinople had had 400 monasteries and 2000 churches. It turns out only 45 out of 2400 have remained.
The deacon said about Surb Khach Church of Van that it was actually a museum, since there was no community there and the church didn’t serve its purpose, they just visited it once a year as a place for prayer. And the other way around, there is a community in Sebastia, whereas there is no church and now “we try to get a place for prayer in Sebastia.”
Melanya BARSEGHYAN
