Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II was received by Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday morning: this is their first meeting, according to Vatican News.

Since his election twenty-five years ago, Catholicos Garegin has met with St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. Tuesday's audience took place at Villa Barberini, the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, where Pope Leo has been staying since Monday evening. 

“The meeting took place in a fraternal and cordial atmosphere, during which various ecclesiastical issues were discussed, and the Armenian Patriarch made special mention of the fate of the Armenians of Artsakh,” Archbishop Khazak Barsamyan, representative of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Etchmiadzin to the Holy See, explained in a telephone interview with Vatican News. The Patriarch invited the Pope to visit Armenia, Archbishop Barsamyan continued, and both confirmed the need for peace—a peace based on justice, as Catholicos Garegin emphasized.

All the members of the delegation who accompanied him on this visit to Rome were with the Catholicos. After the audience with Pope Leo, the group went to the Vatican, where the Patriarch met with Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, and Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.

The day's program also included a visit to the Church of St. Mary Major: in the Papal Basilica, Garegin II wished to pay his respects to Pope Francis, with whom he had established a relationship of dialogue and friendship, by praying before his tomb. He then paused to spend some time in prayer before the icon of Salus Populi Romani. 

The Catholicos' first visit to Rome took place on November 9-10, 2000, when, as the newly elected Catholicos of All Armenians, he was a guest of St. John Paul II on the occasion of the Jubilee of 2000. During this visit, following the declaration signed by St. Paul VI and His Holiness Vazgen I on May 12, 1970, a Joint Declaration was signed: a step on the still ongoing path toward the restoration of full communion between the two Churches.

"Together we profess our faith in the Triune God and in the one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, who became man for our salvation. We also believe in the One, Catholic, Apostolic, and Holy Church. The Church, as the Body of Christ, is truly one and unique. This is our common faith, based on the teaching of the apostles and the fathers of the Church,“ the Declaration says. ”We continue to pray for full and visible communion between us." 

During this visit, John Paul II presented Garegin with the relics of St. Gregory the Illuminator. A year later, on September 25-27, 2001, the Pope from Poland visited Armenia to celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the proclamation of Christianity as the state religion. 

He was the first Pope to set foot on Armenian soil. The relics of St. Gregory were also handed over to Patriarch Aram I of the Great House of Cilicia and to the then Armenian Catholic Patriarch, His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmoun.

Catholicos Garegin II returned to the Vatican on May 6-9, 2008, at the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI to participate in an ecumenical celebration presided over by the Pope. On April 12, 2015, the Catholicos was again in the Vatican at the request of Pope Francis, who wanted the head of the Armenian Church of Etchmiadzin to be present alongside him during the Mass celebrated in St. Peter's Basilica in memory of the Armenian martyrs of 1915. 

During this celebration, Pope Francis proclaimed St. Gregory of Narek as a teacher of the Universal Church, a moment of great significance for the entire Armenian Church. Following in the footsteps of John Paul II, Pope Francis also visited Armenia from June 24 to 26, 2016.

The first Christian country, as the motto of the apostolic journey states, was once again honored by the Pope of Argentina in 2018, when he solemnly unveiled a statue of St. Gregory of Narek in the Vatican Gardens. 

Garegin II was also present that day, along with the then President of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan. In October of the same year, Garegin II visited Pope Francis again and met with numerous members of the Roman Curia.

Another meeting took place in September 2020, when the Catholicos shared with the Pope updated information on the situation following the military actions against Artsakh. In doing so, he emphasized the importance of the Pope's calls for an end to the conflict and the restoration of peace.