Catholic News Service
Jan 26 2007

Armenian Catholics in Iraq get new archbishop after five-year vacancy

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — For the first time in more than five years, the
tiny Armenian Catholic community in Iraq has its own archbishop.

The Vatican announced Jan. 26 that Pope Benedict XVI had given his
assent to the Armenian Catholic bishops’ election of Father Emmanuel
Dabbaghian, 73, as the Armenian Catholic archbishop of Baghdad.

The post had been vacant since the October 2001 retirement of
Archbishop Paul Coussa at the age of 84.

The Armenian Catholic Archdiocese of Baghdad covers all of Iraq, and
since 2001 Vatican statistics have given the Armenian Catholic
population of the country as 2,000 faithful.

But Deacon Michel Jeangey, head of the Armenian program at Vatican
Radio, told Catholic News Service Jan. 26 that "probably more than
half" the Armenian Catholics have moved, at least temporarily, to
Armenia or Syria.

"They will return if there is peace," he said.

Still, Deacon Jeangey said, one Armenian Catholic priest and a group
of Armenian Catholic nuns continue ministering at the church’s
parishes in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk as well as running a social
center and two schools in Baghdad.

Archbishop-elect Dabbaghian was born Dec. 26, 1933, in Aleppo, Syria.
After studying philosophy and theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian
University, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1967.

He has served as director of an orphanage in Lebanon, as a seminary
rector and as pastor of Armenian parishes in Lebanon and in Georgia.

At the time of his election, he was pastor of the Armenian Catholic
parish in Tbilisi, Georgia, and director of the seminary there.