Clergy Directory

Archbishop Vicken Aykazian (Legate)

Archbishop Vicken Aykazian serves as the Legate of the Eastern Diocese. Most recently, he also served as President of the National Council of Churches USA (NCC).

Archbishop Aykazian was born in Siirt, Turkey, in 1951. He studied theology at the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem and was ordained a deacon in 1968 and later a celibate priest in 1971. In 1992, His Holiness Vasken I, the late Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of all Armenians, ordained him a bishop.

Archbishop Aykazian, who holds a Ph.D. in history and is working on a second Ph.D. in theology at Catholic University in Washington, is an active ecumenist. In addition to his contributions to the NCC, he has been active in the World Council of Churches (WCC) as a member of the Mission and Evangelism Unit, the Orthodox Task Force, and the Central Committee.

He has also served as the Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Switzerland from 1992 to 1996. As pastor of the Armenian Church of Switzerland from 1980 to 1992, he established and organized new church communities in Zurich, Bern, Kreazlingen, and Lugano.

In February 2006, Archbishop Aykazian participated at the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and was elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the WCC.

He received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Kings College in London, England; studied pastoral theology at St. Augustine’s College in Canterbury, England; and attended the Armenian Theological Seminary in Jerusalem and the Holy Cross Armenian Seminary in Istanbul, Turkey.

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