New Director of Inter-Church Relations at the Mother See
July 2015
By Pontifical Order of His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, Rev. Fr. Shahe Ananyan was appointed to serve as the Director of the Inter-Church Relations Department of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin.
Rev. Fr. Shahe Ananyan
(Biography)
Rev. Fr. Shahe Ananyan (baptismal name Artyom) was born on October 1, 1982 in the city of Nor Hachin, Kotayk Province, Armenia. He studied in the local secondary public school from 1989 to 1999. Following his graduation, he entered the Vaskenian Academy at Lake Sevan in 1999, and continued his education the Gevorkian Theological Seminary of Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, graduating in 2005. In 2005 he defended his thesis titled “Impersonal Sentences in the Four Gospels (old Armenian and Greek originals)”.
On December 26, 2004, on St. Stephen the First Martyr’s Day, he was ordained to the diaconate by His Eminence Archbishop Yezras Nersisyan, Primate of the Armenian Diocese of Nor Nakhijevan and Russia, and on September 25, 2004 on the Feast of the Holy Cross Day, he was ordained a celibate priest by His Grace Bishop Taron Cherechyan, and given the priestly name of Shahe. Following his ordination, he served as staff bearer-assistant to His Holiness Karekin II, until 2006.
He departed Armenia to continue his education, and studied at the Catholic University of Paris and the Ancient Oriental Languages and Culture School at Sorbonne University from 2006 to 2009.
On June 2009, in Paris, he defended a thesis titled “Personified wisdom in Proverbs 5, according to Armenian historical literature: A canonical reading experience” for the Theological Candidate of Sciences degree.
On July 2009, he was appointed to serve as the Deputy Editor of the Etchmiadzin Monthly magazine and then in 2012 was appointed as Director of the Official Press Department of Mother See.
He assumed the position of Director of the Publishing Department of Mother See in 2013.
In 2013, he defended his doctoral thesis entitled “The emergence and development of the idea of personified wisdom according to Proverbs 1 thru 20.”, and received the rank of Archimandrite (Vardapet) by His Eminence Archbishop Nathan Hovhannisyan.
Since March 2014, he has studied as postgraduate student at the Yerevan State University (Philosophy and Social Psychology faculty), with a specialty in History of Philosophy.
He is the author of four books in Armenian and foreign languages, and more than four dozen scientific and publicist articles.
In 2006, he served as a delegate to the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches convened in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
He was appointed to serve as a member of the Faith and Order Committee of the World Council of Churches in 2010 and since 2014 has been a member of the ecumenical and theological dialogue committees for the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches, as well as the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
