He declared, “I have a mission in Boston: to serve the Armenian community, from the eldest one to the oldest one. As Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta once said: ‘Not all of us can do great things. but we can do small things with great love’.”
Fr. Ghazar was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1985. He attended the Armenian Catholic Sisters’ Zvartnots School, and after graduating from the Mekhitarist School of that city he went to Bzommar, Lebanon, in 2000 to continue his secondary education. He received his high school diploma in 2006.
He studied philosophy at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Acquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, following which he studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University of the same city, graduating in 2011. Finally, he received a master’s degree in marriage and family from the University of Sagesse in Beirut in 2022. Along the way, he learned to speak five languages — Armenian, English, Turkish, Italian and Arabic.
After his priestly ordination in 2013 as a member of the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Clergy Institute of Bzommar, he went to serve as assistant pastor at St. Savior’s Armenian Catholic Church of Bourdj Hammoud, Lebanon until 2019. Afterwards, he served as assistant pastor of St. Gregory the Illuminator – St. Elijah Cathedral of the Armenian Catholic Church in Beirut until 2022, before coming to the Boston area. He also was spiritual director of the Armenian Catholic youth of the Beirut diocese from 2014 to 2022 and organized many youth activities.
Fr. Ghazar says that not only does he like art, but he preaches faith through art. He sings opera as well as sacred music. In 2008 he took singing lessons in Rome from the Italian teacher Silvana Ferraro. He sang twice before Pope Benedict XVI, in 2010 and 2012, and has performed in many musical religious concerts. In 2018 in Beirut, he started taking vocal teaching lessons with the Armenian diva Arax Chekidjian, and still continues them.
He concluded, “My specific plan for my entire mission in New England and Boston is to preach Christ through Christian art and preserve the Armenian spiritual and cultural heritage.”
