Shenork I Kaloustian of Constantinople

Archbishop Shenork I Kaloustian (in Armenian Շնորհք Գալուստյան) (27 September 1913, Yozgat, Turkey – 7 March 1990, Armenia) was the 82nd Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople under the authority of the Catholicos of Armenia and of all Armenians.

Shenork I Kaloustian of Constantinople

Arshak Kaloustian was sent to attend school at the American missionary orphanage[1] after he lost his father due to the Armenian genocide when he was two years old. His mother was forced to remarry an ethnic Turk and convert to Islam.[2] He became a deacon of the Armenian apostolic church in 1932, was ordained a priest (taking the name Shenork) in 1936 and bishop in October 1955. He was elected as the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1961.[1] Because of his personal family history he had extensive relations to the Crypto-Armenians (Armenians converts to Islam) and at the reunion of Armenians in Jerusalem in 1980, he claimed that there live about 1 million Crypto Armenians in Turkey.[2] During his lifetime, he attended many seminaries in several countries and was a pastor in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom.

He died in Nork Hospital in Yerevan in Soviet Armenia in 1990 after a fall during a visit to the church headquarters at Echmiadzin.[1]


Religious titles
Preceded by Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople
1963–1990
Succeeded by

References edit

  1. ^ a b c "Shnork Kaloustian, 76, An Armenian Prelate". The New York Times. 1990-03-08. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  2. ^ a b Törne, Annika (2019). Dersim – Geographie der Erinnerungen: Eine Untersuchung von Narrativen über Verfolgung und Gewalt (in German). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. pp. 149–150. ISBN 978-3-11-062771-8.