Catholicos Aram I’s Armenian delegation sang “Cilicia” (???????) on stage at the Wednesday General Audience in Saint Peter’s Square on May 20, 2026, during the Catholicos’s multi-day visit to the Vatican, reports Zartonk Media.
The performance came toward the end of the General Audience, where Catholicos Aram I had joined Pope Leo XIV on stage two days after the two Church leaders met and prayed together at the Vatican Apostolic Palace. The delegation of archbishops, bishops and clergy sang the song before the crowd gathered in the square.
Speaking at the start of the audience, Pope Leo XIV welcomed Catholicos Aram I and his delegation, calling the fraternal visit an important occasion to strengthen the bonds of unity between the two Churches as they draw closer to full communion, and prayed that the Holy Spirit would bless the Catholicos’s pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. He urged everyone present to pray for peace in Lebanon and the Middle East, which he said are once again torn apart by violence and war. The Pope thanked Aram I for his constant personal commitment to ecumenism, particularly through the theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and closed by invoking the intercession of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, Saint Gregory of Narek, Saint Nerses the Gracious and the Virgin Mother of God.
“Cilicia” is a 19th-century song expressing longing for Cilicia, the historic Armenian homeland on the Mediterranean coast from which the Catholicosate takes its name. The Great House of Cilicia, displaced during the genocide and its aftermath, has been headquartered in Antelias, Lebanon, since 1930. The delegation sang it steps from the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul.
The Catholicos’s delegation in Rome consists of Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian, Archbishop Kegham Khatcherian, Archbishop Nareg Alemezian, Archbishop Anoushavan Tanielian, Archbishop Papken Tcharian, Archbishop Shahe Panossian, Archbishop Magar Ashkarian, Archbishop Mesrob Sarkissian, Bishop Sahag Yemishian, Bishop Dajad Ashekian, Very Rev. Fr. Hovagim Panjarjian and Very Rev. Fr. Sarkis Aprahamian.
The General Audience appearance was part of a broader Vatican visit during which Catholicos Aram I met privately with Pope Leo XIV, raised the right of return to occupied Artsakh and the release of Armenian leaders detained in Baku, delivered a public lecture on the future of Middle Eastern Christianity, and met with senior offices of the Roman Curia.
