ARCHBISHOP SEPUH SARGSIAN: ENEMY OF RELIGION IS NOT OTHER RELIGION, BUT GODLESSNESS
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Mar 09 2006
TEHRAN, MARCH 9, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. “Every religion
has its holinesses, sanctuaries, its prophets and the credo, making
the axis of its belief. Nobody has right to despise or to mock the
cherished holinesses, authorities of another religion. This is one of
the most important circumstances of the human morality”, announced
Archbishop Sepuh Sargsian, the primate of the Armenian diocese of
Tehran, making a speech at the second sitting of the regional council
of the Religious leaders, that was held on March 4 in the building
of the Islamic Culture and Communication organization. His Holiness
Sepuh mentioned that ten days before, the 9th conference of the
International Council of Churches, held at the city of Porto Allegre,
Brazil, which was headed by Aram I Catholicos of the Great House
of Cilicia, refered to this phenomenon with a special announcement,
condemned the happened and called to avoid the savagenesses. “The enemy
of religion is not the other religion, but the Godlessness, poverty,
the usage of drugs, unjustice, the degradation of moral values and
the globalization. We all are called to be unanimous in order to
fight against this kind of phenomena”, mentioned the primate of the
Armenian diocese of Tehran. As the Tehran daily “Alik” (Wave) informs,
Gholamali Haddad Adel, President of the Islamic Parliament of Iran;
Seyed Mohammad Khatamin, Ex-President of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, Director of the International Center of Dialogue of Religions
and Civilizations; Saffar Harandi, the Minister of Islamic Culture
and Leadership; the Deputies of the religious minorities of Iran,
the President of the Council of the Orthodox Church of Russia, the
Ambassador of Vatican in Iran and others also made speeches. Among
those invited were Archbishop Nshan Garakeheyan, the Primate of the
Armenian Catholicos Community of Iran, Henrik Shahnazarian, spiritual
paster of the Armenian Gospel Community of Iran, Academician, Doctor
Harmik Davtian, Gevorg Vardanian and Robert Beglarian, Deputies of the
Northern and Southern Armenians of Iran in the Islamic Parliament,
representatives of the Armenian Diocesan Council of Tehran and of
national primacy. The participants of the sitting condemned the
outrage against the religious holinesses. At the end of the sitting
a resolution was read, one of the points of which, that was worked
out with help of the Armenian Diocese of Tehran, was the following:
“The present century is a century of dialogue. For true, valid and
sincere dialogue the following should be taken into consideration:
every religion has its ideological world, credo. We shouldn’t give
us right to explain and comment upon that persuasions and credos and
to present it as a absolute truth”. At the end of the sitting trees
were planted as a token of dialogue of religions.