Servant of God Grégoire-Pierre Agagianian

Gregorio Pietro XV Agagianian (ah-gah-JAHN-yan; anglicized: Gregory Peter; Western Armenian: Գրիգոր Պետրոս ԺԵ. Աղաճանեան, Krikor Bedros ŽĒ. Aghajanian; born Ghazaros Aghajanian, 15 September 1895 – 16 May 1971) was an Armenian cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was the head of the Armenian Catholic Church (as Patriarch of Cilicia) from 1937 to 1962 and supervised the Catholic Church's missionary work for more than a decade, until his retirement in 1970. He was considered papabile on two occasions, in 1958 and 1963. Educated in Tiflis and Rome, Agagianian first served as leader of the Armenian Catholic community of Tiflis before the Bolshevik takeover of the Caucasus in 1921. He then moved to Rome, where he first taught and then headed the Pontifical Armenian College until 1937 when he was elected to lead the Armenian Catholic Church, which he revitalized after major losses the church had experienced during the Armenian genocide. Agagianian was elevated to the cardinalate in 1946 by Pope Pius XII. He was Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) from 1958 to 1970. Theologically a moderate, a linguist, and an authority on the Soviet Union, he served as one of the four moderators at the Second Vatican Council. His cause for canonization was opened on 28 October 2022. Agagianian was born Ghazaros Aghajanian on 15 September 1895, in the city of Akhaltsikhe, in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire (in present-day Samtskhe-Javakheti province of Georgia) to Harutiun Aghajanian and Iskuhi Sarukhanian. Around the time of his birth, around 60% of the city's 15,000 inhabitants were Armenians. His family was part of the Armenian Catholic minority among the Javakheti Armenians, most of whom were followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church. His ancestors had emigrated from Erzurum, fleeing Ottoman persecution, to the Russian Caucasus after the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829. His father died when he was five.