Ani-Kristi Manvelian was ordained a deaconess by the Tehran Prelate
BY HRATCH TCHILINGIRIAN
The Prelate of Tehran ordained a young woman as a deaconess in Tehran’s St. Sarkis Mother Church on September 25, 2017. Even as the office of deaconess had existed in Armenian Church convents for centuries, this was a historic first. It is the first time that a lay woman, not a nun, was ordained a “parish deacon.â€
