A New Ethno-Religious Entity in British Mandate Palestine: The Armenian Catholic community

Abstract

This article analyses the dynamics of the formation of the Armenian Catholic community in Jerusalem, a process that began in 1854 and accelerated with the arrival of the genocide survivors during the first decades of the twentieth century. The Armenian Catholic Church became one of Jerusalem’s officially recognised Churches, with the title Patriarchal Vicariate, and its lay community received its own distinct status as one of the city’s religious communities. The community really took shape in the 1930s, during the British Mandate, under the combined impact of the British Government’s communitarianist policy and the impetus from Armenian political and cultural organisations to reconstruct national institutions in their adopted countries.

Keywords

• Armenian Catholic community
• survivors of the genocide
• ethno-religious minorities
• British Mandate
• Palestinian citizenship