Karekin I, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, visited the state as part of an 11-day visit to the United States. The Syrian-born, Oxford-educated prelate, enthroned last April, is the first prelate in 600 years to take office in an independent Armenia. Speaking last night at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, Karekin declared that Armenians are "at the dawn of a new age" that will show them to be "not victims of history but makers of history." Karekin, his departure from Washington delayed by a longer-than- expected meeting with the President, arrived at Green State Airport late yesterday afternoon and was driven to Providence. In the lobby of the Westin Hotel, Karekin was greeted by more than 200 people, including a group of about two dozen children who sang for the 63-year-old patriarch. Karekin later told the dignitaries who also greeted him there that "the fresh voices of children" should serve as a reminder to all that "old nations do not always have to become passe," that "old nations" can be "always new." The patriarch is widely regarded as the one man who will be able to restore unity to a church that, at least in the United States, has been divided for nearly six decades. Most Armenian Apostolic churches have given their allegiance to the patriarch at the Holy See of Etchmiadzin in Armenia, where the center of the Church is situated. But many congregations in the United States -- including Providence's SS. Vartanantz Church on Broadway -- shifted their allegiance to the catholicos of the See of Cilicia, in Lebanon, fearing that Etchmiadzin could not be trusted because of its location in Soviet-occupied Armenia. The irony is that Karekin was the leader of the Holy See of Cilicia for 13 years -- and previously the coadjutor there -- before his election last April in Etchmiadzin as Supreme Patriarch. If anyone doubted that the prelate has the opportunity to bring the two sides together, a scene at the Westin may have eased it: The Very Rev. Ghevont Samoorian, pastor of SS. Sahag and Mesrob Armenian Apostolic Church on Jefferson Street, affirmed his allegiance to the Patriarch, while his conterpart from the other faction, the Rev. Mesrob Tashjian of St. Vartanantz Church, boasted to a group of clergy that Karekin "was my bishop for 18 years" and that in Rhode Island, at least, "I was his PR man." At the service in the cathedral last night, Karekin, carrying the gold gavazan, or stick, that is the symbol of his authority, reminded his listeners how much the world has changed in the 13 years since he last visited Providence, as the catholicos of Cilicia: the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Soviet communism, new freedom to the peoples of South Africa and peace in the Middle East. "Let us be honest. How many of you had lost all hope that Armenia would ever be independent," the prelate said in a booming voice. The events of the last decade show, he declared, that "life is never static, neve unchangeable. Life is progress. Life is on a march toward truer and truer fulfillment." It has been said, he recalled that when people of diverse religious faiths -- whether Armenian Apostolic, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican or Protestant -- can look into one another's eyes they will see paradise. So it is, he said, with the diverse Armenian churches. Praising Bishop Louis E. Gelineau for offering the Catholic cathedral for last night's service, Karekin declared, "I thank you [the bishop] for being a witness to the ecumenical spirit." At a brief wine-and-cheese reception at the Westin with civic and religious dignitaries, Mayor Vincent A. Cianci presented the prelate the key to the city. Karekin quipped that he still remembers when Cianci last gave him the key to the city, when he came to Providence as catholicos in 1983. "He gave me the key -- but as he usually does, he did not show me where the door is." Then, the patriarch added, "The door is your heart. And with the key I ask you to open your hearts." The patriarch also joked with his old friend Vartan Gregorian, the Brown University president, whom he has known since the days when Gregorian took courses from him as an Armenian high school student in Lebanon. "There was a time when I could punish him. Now, I think, trying to punish him could jeopardize my authority," the prelate quipped. In a news conference at the Westin about a half-hour after his arrival, Karekin said that in his meeting at the White House he expressed thanks to Mr. Clinton for the United States' "solidarity" with the people of Armenia in offering millions of dollars in assistance in the aftermath of the 1988 Armenian earthquake and in helping them emerge from 70 years of Soviet domination. He said he and Mr. Clinton also discussed the continuing blockade of Armenia by Turkey, prompted by conflict in Azerbaijan, and Armenia's need for developmental assistance to make it "not a country of charity" but of independent strength.

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