MONTREAL–The first National Representative Assembly of the Canadian Prelacy concluded its activities Saturday with the election of Bishop Khajag Hagopian as the first Prelate of Canada. The Assembly also mapped out the Prelacy’s activities for the upcoming two years and elected the region’s Executive and Religious councils.
Prelate Hagopian was born in Syria on June 20–1946. At a young age–he and his family relocated to Lebanon–where he received his education at Torkomian school and in 1961 entered the Monestary at the Catholicoste of the Holy See of Cilicia in Antelias. In 1965 he is ordained a deacon by then Bishop Karekin Sarkisian–who later became the Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia and the Catholicos of All Armenia’s.
In 1968–Bishop Hagopian was ordained a celibate priest and later in 1971 he received the title of Very Reverend.
Bishop Hagopian was elected the Locum Tenens of the Northern Syria and the Gulf Prelacy. After serving in that capacity for eight years–he returned to Lebanon where he resumed his academic studies at the Middle East Theological institute. In 1981–at the invitation of Arch. Mesrob Ashjian–then the Prelate of Eastern US and Canada–Bishop Hagopian relocated to New York where he served as special assistant to the Prelate.
In 1983–he became the parish priest of the newly established St. Mary Church in Toronto. In 1985 he was ordained a Right Reverend by Arch. Ashjian. In 1994–Bishop Hagopian served as the parish priest of the Holy Martyrs Armenian Church in Encino only to return to New York in 1995–where he led the congregation at the St. Gregory the Illuminator Church.
In June of 1997–His Holiness Aram I–Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia appointed him bishop–and in 2002 the Catholicos appointed Bishop Hagopian as the Locum Tenens of the Canadian Prelacy.