Ping
“St. Gregory of Narek is venerated as a saint both in the Catholic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is not in full communion with Rome. The Armenian Catholic Church, an Eastern Church in union with Rome, has about 1 million members.”
This is the non-Pope Pope. He is our Catholic version of Obama.
What's the difference? Aren't catholics and all those "other" related sects really all the same I? think you're splitting hairs here.
It’s not unusual for Eastern Rite Catholic churches to lay claim to saints from their tradition who lived before those church’s formal union (or re-union) with Rome. The argument is that the separation wasn’t necessarily something they had any say in; sometimes, as in India, it seemed to most be due to distance and poor communication. There were indeed several attempts to re-unite Rome with the Armenian Church prior to the 18th century which failed for one reason or another.
By the way, the Eparchy for the Armenian Catholic Church in Argentina is called the San Gregorio de Narek en Buenos Aires.
The current pope is from Buenos Aires and ministered to Eastern Rite Catholics there and probably knew the Armenian Catholic clergy well and probably became very familiar with St Gregory of Narek and his writings.
Surely you are aware of all the rites in communion with Rome? Armenian rite is among them.
Welcome to Free Republic.
Eastern Saints should not surprise anyone. The Catholic Church accepts the Eastern Churches as fully valid Churches in Apostolic Succession. If St. Gregory of Narek had ever expressed schismatic views, the Catholic Church would not venerate him as a saint.
And here I thought islamism was the enemy.
Think this is bad, wait till you figure out Saint Augustine confessed every aspect of TULIP (both Luther and Calvin relied on Augustine heavily in their work). Nobody questions his Catholic bonafides.
So as to promote full Christian I suppose.
Good question. Francis just named a non-Catholic, schismatic as DOCTOR OF THE (CATHOLIC) CHURCH.