Photo: Tony Savino

Archbishop of the Armenian Orthodox Church will make a rare visit to Naples, the reports.

Unlike the archbishops of most churches, who are tasked with baptizing or confirming or ordaining around their diocese, Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, of the Armenian Orthodox Church, comes to Naples this weekend simply to be with his Southwest Florida flock.

It will be his first time here since 2006, a cause for major celebration, with two dinners and the church’s service, known as the Divine Liturgy, on Sunday.

Naples is receiving the Eastern U.S. archbishop at a fortuitous time, too: In the Armenian church, Sunday is “The Day of Good Living,” the last day before the Orthodox penitential season of Lent begins.

This congregation is holding its breath until Saturday. Archbishop Barsamian was actually scheduled to visit last year but was summoned at the last minute to a conference in Armenia.

“So we held the banquet anyway, but he couldn’t come,” recalled Frank Avakian Stoneson, parish council chairman.

Stoneson knows the archbishop; he worked for him in the Eastern diocese office in New York for 10 years.

“He’s a real Christian spirit,” he said. “He has really pushed for ecumenism, and he’s served on interfaith organizations around the world.”

He also invited the public to experience the two-hour Divine Liturgy, a formal event with ecclesiastical robes and a sermon from the archbishop, on Sunday: “If you haven’t been to one, it’s a great experience.”

The Naples parish is considered a mission because it does not have its own sanctuary. It meets at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Davis Boulevard, bringing in a priest for its service, known as the Divine Liturgy, twice a month.

Nearly half of its members are seasonal, Stoneson said. The congregations dwindles to about half its 100-member count during the summer. There’s an average of one baptism a year, according to records with the national church.

That isn’t a concern to its leaders. There is a history of loyalty to the Armenian church and to its adherents’ struggling homeland. Their faith to them is “like the skin of our bodies,”  Archbishop Barsamian said from his office in New York.

“We don’t proselytize,” he added “But for someone who wants to adopt our faith, we welcome them in.”

If anything, the Armenian church has been fostering communion with other religions rather than taking from them, Archbishop Barsamian said. He was one of the founders of an annual dialogue among Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic church, tackling the tough theological points that could divide them.

It has brought about revelations that churches have misunderstood each other for years, perhaps centuries, when they could have been collaborating. An example in mind is the nature of Jesus Christ, whom all consider the son of God, but whom some churches don’t consider as ever having been human.

“We believe in two natures of Christ. He was human and divine,” he explained. After one of its ecumenical dialogues the discovery came that they all believe the same thing: “All the theologians see there was misunderstanding in the past. Some of it had to do with languages — now that some of those texts are translated they see there was a wrong interpretation.”

Even more surprising were the statements of Pope Francis at the dialogue’s conference last year. The pope addressed the assembled group with the idea of a “unity where no one is higher than the other.”

That is a watershed moment for Orthodox churches, which each have prelates but have always understood Catholicism to insist the pope is the universal head of the church. It was “a breakthrough,” said Archbishop Barsamian, that still excites him: “So having different heads for churches does not create any obstacle to communion. It looks like Pope Francis is in favor of this.”

All of those may be in his message to the faithful this weekend. But Archbishop Barsamian says his primary message to Naples will be the one that bedevils Christianity everywhere — that we are in danger of becoming that “Material Girl” Madonna sang about. That, and the rise of secularism, that separation of church from daily life, worry him most.

“That’s a challenge, especially in the Western World,” he remarked. “Is that the intent of life?”