"Joining forces to enable the Armenian society to retain and strengthen the Christian principles that are its foundations and its distinctive traits". This is the "joint and common commitment" of the Holy See and the Armenian Church, starting from the "common concerns for the promotion of human life at all its stages, for the development of civil values, for honesty, for marital faithfulness, for the interest for the common good, for a sound education of the young, for a careful, helpful assistance of the poor, the sick, the outcasts. These "challenges", which demand not "divisions" but a "full and determined cooperation", have been listed by card. Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, during the celebration of the Vespers with the Catholic community, in Gyumri. According to Bertone, "an extensive and convinced education of lay people" is "essential", because only "mature and well-prepared devotees" can "guarantee a widespread work": the experience of the communist years proved that, "without the commitment of the breadwinners, the grandmothers, the mothers and the young, religion would withdraw into the village and in the village it would often wear out in small but harmful fights that can destroy the peace and even the Christian life". All this, concluded Bertone, partly to fight the "scarcity of clergy" that "hopefully will soon be overcome".
