Catholicosate of Cilicia

The Catholicosate of Cilicia, called in Armenian the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia, is one of the two Catholicosates of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Its seat has been at Antelias, in Lebanon, since 1930.¹²

The seat of the Cilician Catholicos passed through Thavblour, Dzamendav, Dzovk and Hromkla before it moved to Sis in 1293, where it stayed for nearly seven hundred years.¹ In 1441 the Armenian bishops elected a Catholicos of Etchmiadzin, so that there were two Catholicoi. The Catholicos of Etchmiadzin holds a primacy of honor, and the Catholicos of Cilicia holds equal rights and privileges.¹

After the Armenian Genocide and the massacres of 1921, Ottoman-Turkish authorities forced Catholicos Sahak II out of Sis on 25 November 1921. He handed the keys to Turkish army officers and left with his clergy, going to Jerusalem, then to Aleppo and Cyprus.²¹ In 1930 he established the Catholicosate at Antelias, where a seminary, a printing press and a cathedral were later built.²¹

The Catholicosate has fourteen dioceses, prelacies and vicariates. Its present head is Catholicos Aram I.¹ In 2015 he filed a lawsuit in Turkey’s Constitutional Court asking for the historic Catholicosate at Sis to be returned to the Cilician See.²