PRESS RELEASE
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Information Services
Address: Vagharshapat, Republic of Armenia
Contact: Rev. Fr. Ktrij Devejian
Tel: (374 1) 517 163
Fax: (374 1) 517 301
E-Mail: ktrij@etchmiadzin.am
August 25, 2004

New Appointment in the Mother See

By the Pontifical Order of His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and
Catholicos of All Armenians, Very Rev. Fr. Anushavan Vardapet Jamkotchian, a
member of the Brotherhood of Holy Etchmiadzin, has been assigned as parish
priest of Saint Gregory the Illuminator Mother Cathedral of Yerevan.

Father Anushavan, having recently completed his education in the Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelms University (Bonn, Germany), has returned to the Mother
See to continue his service to the Armenian Church. Father Anushavan is a
doctoral candidate in the field of religious rights.

* * *
Very Rev. Fr. Anushavan Vardapet Jamkotchian
(baptismal name – Andranik)

Born in Vagharshapat, Armenia in 1971, he received his primary and secondary
education at Vahan Rshtuni School.
Studied in the Gevorkian Theological Seminary of Holy Etchmiadzin from
1989-1994. Defended his thesis entitled “Movses Jughayetsi’s Collection of
Philology”, and graduated from the Seminary.
In 1993, he was ordained a deacon.
He was ordained a celibate priest in 1995 by His Grace Bishop Asoghik
Aristakesian.
>From 1994-1998, he attended classes at the Komitas State Conservatory in
Yerevan. Concurrently, he was an instructor of liturgical music at the
Gevorkian Theological Seminary.
>From 1998-2000 he studied church music in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, at Halle
Protestant College.
>From 2000-2001, Father Anushavan studied German at Martin Luther University.
In 2001, he returned to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, and defended his
thesis entitled “Komitas and the Armenian Church” and was elevated to the
rank of Vardapet (Archimandrite).
Also in 2001, he studied in the School of Law of Martin Luther University in
Germany, concentrating on “Jurisprudence and the Rights of the Church”.
>From 2002 to 2004, Anushavan Vardapet studied “Church Canon Law” at the
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn, Germany.
In 2004, he defended his thesis entitled “The Basis of Rights of the
Armenian Church from the 4th through 20th Centuries”, and became a candidate
of doctoral sciences.