The liturgical language is classical Armenian. Armenia became Christian at the end of the 3d cent. In the next century the young church made itself autonomous, apparently because of the efforts of the metropolitan bishop of Caesarea, St. Basil the Great, to impose certain reforms. Part of the Armenian Church reunited with Rome temporarily in the 13th and 14th cent., and missionary work by the Roman Church in the 14th cent. In 1740 the Catholic Armenian rite was officially organized, in communion with the pope but under its own patriarch.
Today there are Armenian churches in every continent.
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