Gregorio Pietro XV Agagianian (ah-gah-JAHN-yan;[3] anglicized: Gregory Peter;[6] Western Armenian: Գրիգոր Պետրոս ԺԵ.

"[12] He had a brother, Petros (Peter), who was a telegraph operator, and a sister, Elizaveta, the widow of an office worker, who both lived in the Soviet Union.

[13][1] Despite the upheaval brought by the Russian Revolution, he thereafter served as a parish priest in Tiflis (Tbilisi) and then as pastor of the city's Armenian Catholic community from 1919.

[5] Agagianian reportedly played a key role in keeping the Armenian-populated village of Kessab within Syria when Turkey annexed the Hatay State in 1939 by intervening as a representative of the Vatican.

[26] According to historian Felix Corley, "One of the fiercest opponents of Communist rule in Armenia was the head of the Armenian Catholic community in Lebanon, Cardinal Bedros (Peter) Agagianian.

In successive pastoral letters Agagianian attacked the Communists' record and spoke of the 'bitter reality and material misery' in Soviet Armenia.

"[27] In 1950, Agagianian published a new pastoral letter in the journal Avetik in which he accused the Armenian Apostolic Church of breaking with its own past by rejecting the Council of Chalcedon and embracing what he termed the heresy of Miaphysitism.

Agagianian also alleged, "The Catholic Armenian Apostolic Church is the only preserver of the holy faith and rites of our ancestors including Gregory the Illuminator.

"[28] According to Felix Corley, opposition to Agagianian and his pastoral letter caused a rare moment of unity between the two divided factions of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Among many other things, Agagianian was accused by Oriental Orthodox clergy of being "self-appointed" and having no lawful spiritual authority over the Armenian people.

It is very telling, however, that "even on such a key matter", Catholicos-Patriarch Kevork VI had to file a written request with the Council of Ministers of the Armenian SSR and, "had to depend on the[ir] goodwill", even to be allowed to see the full text of Agagianian's pastoral letter.

[29] Agagianian inaugurated the Armenian Catholic church in Anjar, Lebanon in 1954[30] and founded a boarding house for orphaned boys there.

[1] Pope Pius, who had a "great interest in the Eastern churches", called on Agagianian to celebrate a pontifical Mass in the Armenian rite in the Sistine Chapel on 12 March 1946.

[45] Fianna Fáil President of Ireland Éamon de Valera was famously pictured kissing Agagianian's ring.

[49][50] On 18 October 1964, when the Uganda Martyrs were canonized by Pope Paul VI, Agagianian presided over the Holy Mass at Namugongo.

He was appointed by Pope Paul VI as one of the four moderators who directed the course of the debates,[54] along with Leo Joseph Suenens, Julius Döpfner, and Giacomo Lercaro.

[56] He had a special role in the preparation of the missionary decree Ad gentes and Gaudium et spes, the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.

[71] According to John Whooley, an authority on the Armenian Catholic Church, Agagianian was considered "a strong contender, most 'papabile'" before the 1963 conclave and there was "much expectation" that he would be elected.

[18] The Tablet wrote in 1963 that their meeting, which was preceded by negotiations partly conducted by the Italian ambassador in Moscow, "must rank as one of the best-kept diplomatic secrets of all time".

[81] In a January 1958 diplomatic report Marcus Cheke, UK Ambassador to the Holy See, wrote that Agagianian "believes that the best thing for the Western powers to do is to hang on, avoid war (and the more strongly armed and united they are, the less danger there is of Russia venturing on a war) and to wait for a transformation inside Russia, which he thinks will happen sooner or later.

[83] He noted that there was an intolerant environment in the Soviet Union towards religion and argued that "We [Armenian Catholics] are forced to remain as emigrants to preserve our church and faith".

[84] In the early 1950s, Etchmiadzin, the Soviet-based official publication of the Armenian Apostolic Church, published articles severely criticizing Agagianian.

It also argued that Agagianian also held the "key to submitting the Oriental Orthodox churches of the Middle East (Coptic, Assyrian, Ethiopian, etc.)

"[87] In another article, Agagianian was accused in "seek[ing] to bring Armenian believers under the control of the Vatican" and make them "anti-national [...] without an ideal and dignity [....] in short, a cosmopolitan crowd, which will serve the Turkish-American war machine.

When Agagianian died, Vazgen I, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, sent Pope Paul VI a letter mourning his death.

[95] He spoke fluent Armenian (his mother language),[12][2] Russian, Italian, French, English,[21] was proficient in Latin and Hebrew,[21] had a reading knowledge of Arabic,[21] and learned German, Spanish, classical Greek.

[97] Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston called Agagianian "one of the most brilliant Churchmen of modern times, and possessor of one of the greatest minds in the history of the Church".

[12] Cardinal Angelo DeDonatis, Vicar General of His Holiness, issued a decree on 4 February 2020, officially commencing the process for Agagianian's beatification.