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A SPEECH BY HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES DURING HIS VISIT TO THE ST. YEGHICHE ARMENIAN CHURCH, LONDON
The Prince of Wales, UK
Nov 20 2014
Published on 19th November 2014
Your Eminence, Bishop, and Ladies and Gentlemen. Before I leave this
wonderful Church I particularly wanted to thank Bishop Vahan for this
really exquisite icon, I will treasure it for the rest of my life and
I am hugely grateful. It will be a very special memento to my visit
to you all here today.
I particularly wanted, more than anything else, to express my
warmest thanks for such a marvellous welcome here to St. Yeghichè. I
also wanted on this occasion to pay a special tribute to Vatche
Manoukian for the wonderful generosity which has enabled this church
to flourish the way it does. It is yet another example of his and
Tamar's incredible and continuous generosity to so many remarkable
causes all over the world.
I am also so deeply grateful to the Ambassador Dr. Armen Sarkissian
who showed me so carefully around Armenia two years ago. It was a
visit I had been looking forward to for many years and finally I
achieved it and his hospitality was indeed hugely appreciated.
I am also very grateful to you, Bishop Vahan as I know that the
Armenian Church in the United Kingdom and Ireland is blessed to have
such a Primate whose wonderful work for the Armenian community is
rooted in his profound faith and apparently boundless energy.
And Ladies and Gentlemen I am so pleased and delighted to be with
you today and to join my prayers to those of the world's oldest
established church, which I understand originated from the missions
of the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus and was formally recognised
as the national faith in, remarkably, 301 AD. So we are very young
here in the United Kingdom in terms of Christian experience.
So whilst it is a joy for me to be in St Yeghichè this morning it
is of course the most soul destroying tragedy that the Armenian
Church is facing such indescribable persecution in the Middle East,
in countries where Armenian Christians have long lived peacefully
with their neighbours.
It is, literally, heart breaking to learn of the attacks on Christians
and on the churches where they gather, such as the mindless, brutal
destruction of the Armenian Church in Deir el Zour earlier this year.
A treasured memorial to the appalling sufferings of the Armenian
people.
Your Grace, I should like to thank you for standing before us today to
tell us about the continued sufferings of the Armenian Church in Iraq.
I should also like to say that I greatly admire the courage and faith
of your flock who are an example to us all of faith, quite literally,
under such grotesque and barbarous assault.
Today's Gospel reading reminds us of our Lord's words of comfort
and encouragement to those who are undergoing persecution. Perhaps
we need also, to remember the instruction issued by the writer to
the Hebrews. "Remember then that are in bonds, as bound with them;
and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body."
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what we must all, as Christians, seek to
do. As I have said before along with so many others I have been deeply
distressed by the appalling, nightmare faced by Christians, and other
minority communities in various parts of the Middle East. Every week
I receive see letters from people who are gravely concerned about
the persecuted church in the Middle East.
Our prayers for those who have to endure this continuing horror,
seem so hopelessly inadequate under such dreadful circumstances,
but please, please just know how truly heartfelt they are.
http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/news-and-diary/the-prince-of-wales-visits-the-armenian-church/speech
The Prince of Wales, UK
Nov 20 2014
Published on 19th November 2014
Your Eminence, Bishop, and Ladies and Gentlemen. Before I leave this
wonderful Church I particularly wanted to thank Bishop Vahan for this
really exquisite icon, I will treasure it for the rest of my life and
I am hugely grateful. It will be a very special memento to my visit
to you all here today.
I particularly wanted, more than anything else, to express my
warmest thanks for such a marvellous welcome here to St. Yeghichè. I
also wanted on this occasion to pay a special tribute to Vatche
Manoukian for the wonderful generosity which has enabled this church
to flourish the way it does. It is yet another example of his and
Tamar's incredible and continuous generosity to so many remarkable
causes all over the world.
I am also so deeply grateful to the Ambassador Dr. Armen Sarkissian
who showed me so carefully around Armenia two years ago. It was a
visit I had been looking forward to for many years and finally I
achieved it and his hospitality was indeed hugely appreciated.
I am also very grateful to you, Bishop Vahan as I know that the
Armenian Church in the United Kingdom and Ireland is blessed to have
such a Primate whose wonderful work for the Armenian community is
rooted in his profound faith and apparently boundless energy.
And Ladies and Gentlemen I am so pleased and delighted to be with
you today and to join my prayers to those of the world's oldest
established church, which I understand originated from the missions
of the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus and was formally recognised
as the national faith in, remarkably, 301 AD. So we are very young
here in the United Kingdom in terms of Christian experience.
So whilst it is a joy for me to be in St Yeghichè this morning it
is of course the most soul destroying tragedy that the Armenian
Church is facing such indescribable persecution in the Middle East,
in countries where Armenian Christians have long lived peacefully
with their neighbours.
It is, literally, heart breaking to learn of the attacks on Christians
and on the churches where they gather, such as the mindless, brutal
destruction of the Armenian Church in Deir el Zour earlier this year.
A treasured memorial to the appalling sufferings of the Armenian
people.
Your Grace, I should like to thank you for standing before us today to
tell us about the continued sufferings of the Armenian Church in Iraq.
I should also like to say that I greatly admire the courage and faith
of your flock who are an example to us all of faith, quite literally,
under such grotesque and barbarous assault.
Today's Gospel reading reminds us of our Lord's words of comfort
and encouragement to those who are undergoing persecution. Perhaps
we need also, to remember the instruction issued by the writer to
the Hebrews. "Remember then that are in bonds, as bound with them;
and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body."
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what we must all, as Christians, seek to
do. As I have said before along with so many others I have been deeply
distressed by the appalling, nightmare faced by Christians, and other
minority communities in various parts of the Middle East. Every week
I receive see letters from people who are gravely concerned about
the persecuted church in the Middle East.
Our prayers for those who have to endure this continuing horror,
seem so hopelessly inadequate under such dreadful circumstances,
but please, please just know how truly heartfelt they are.
http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/news-and-diary/the-prince-of-wales-visits-the-armenian-church/speech