St Joseph’s Armenian Catholic Cathedral, Qamishli

St Joseph’s Cathedral is the Armenian Catholic cathedral of Qamishli and one of the city’s two Armenian churches; the other is the Armenian Apostolic church of Surp Hagop. It became the seat of a patriarchal vicariate in 1938 and was made a cathedral in 1954. Sources say nothing about its architecture or when it was built, so this page tells the history of the institution and its community.

Where it is

On the east side of Shukri al-Quwatli Street, opposite Qamishli Hospital. It is about 300 metres north-east of the city stadium and about 500 metres west of the Jaghjagh stream. The Salam Armenian private school adjoins it to the south-west.

Where the community came from

Qamishli was founded after the First World War on a newly drawn border, and it grew in the 1920s and 1930s with Armenian and Syriac migration. When the Armenian Catholic archdiocese of Mardin, in what is now south-eastern Turkey, broke up, its faithful regathered here.

In 1938 the Patriarchal Vicariate of Qamishli was set up with this church as its centre. On 29 June 1954 Pope Pius XII raised the vicariate to the Eparchy of Qamishli — an eparchy being the Eastern Catholic equivalent of a diocese — and the church became its cathedral.

The community today

In 2015 the eparchy had about 2500 faithful, two parishes and three priests. Since 1992 it has been run by Boutros Marayati, Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, as apostolic administrator. The congregation in Qamishli numbered 1250 in 2010 and had fallen to 500 by 2019.

What happened in 2019

On 11 November 2019 the cathedral’s priest, Father Hovsep Hanna Bedoyan, and his father were shot dead on the road while travelling to inspect repairs to a destroyed Armenian Catholic church in Deir ez-Zor. ISIL claimed the attack. On the same day a bomb went off in front of the cathedral.

Don’t miss

The link with Aleppo. Since 1992 the Qamishli eparchy has been run from the Armenian Catholic archdiocese in Aleppo; the entry on this site for the Armenian Catholic Cathedral of Aleppo is the other end of the same church.