Armenian Catholic eparchy for US and Canada gets new Beirut-born auxiliary bishop

Pope Francis has appointed Msgr. Parsegh Baghdassarian, rector of St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral in Glendale, California, as auxiliary bishop of the Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Nareg.

The eparchy headquartered in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, covers all of the United States and Canada and has 51,000 Catholic faithful. The eparchy is part of the Armenian Catholic Church, one of the 24 self-governing churches with their own rites in communion with the pope that make up the global Catholic Church.

The appointment was publicized April 8 by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in Ottawa and April 3 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington.

A native of Beirut, Lebanon, Bishop-designate Baghdassarian, 49, has been cathedral rector since 2017. He also is a representative of the Armenian Catholic Church for Caritas in Lebanon.

From 2007-2017 he was general treasurer of the Patriarchal Clergy Institute of Bzommar, a Lebanon-based Armenian Catholic religious congregation. The bishop-designate was ordained to the priesthood for the institute Sept. 2, 2000.

The date of his episcopal ordination has not been announced.

Born Feb. 21, 1975, Bishop-designate Baghdassarian entered St. Michael the Archangel Seminary in Bzommar, Lebanon, in 1988. He completed studies in philosophy and theology from 1993-1996 and continued his formation in theology in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 2001, he graduated from the Pontifical Oriental Institute with a licentiate in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. He also obtained a diploma in the formation of educators at the Salesian Pontifical University (2011-2012).

Other assignments after his 2000 ordination to the priesthood included vice rector of St. Vartan Seminary in Aleppo, Syria (2001-2002); treasurer of Caritas in Damascus, Syria (2002-2007); and rector of the major and minor seminaries (2011-2017). He was appointed as a judge of the Armenian Ecclesiastical Court of the Maronite Tribunal in 2012.