President Vahagn Khachaturyan visited the Armenian Church of St. Andrew in Cupertino

President Vahagn Khachaturyan, who is on a working visit to the US state of California, visited the Armenian Church of St. Andrew in Cupertino and took part in the liturgy.

Accompanied by Parish Priest Fr. Datev Harutyunian, the President of the Republic also visited the center next to the Church and met with children attending the Saturday School of the Church, employees of the center-school.

The President welcomed the attendees and noted in his speech. "Peoples and nations exist as far as they preserve and give life to the customs and traditions. If our customs are gone, we simply lose our value system.

It is extremely important to carry our customs with us wherever we live. It is of great importance to pass them on to the young and next generations.

I am glad that there are kids, teenagers here who have adopted our Armenian customs through dance or song and will pass them on to the next generations. Thank you for everything I see here."

Touching upon the events taking place in Armenia, the President, in particular, said: "I can assure you that we, as the Republic of Armenia and as representatives of the government of the Republic of Armenia, bear great responsibility for the preservation, strengthening and passing our statehood on to the next generations... We want to be a full-fledged state and face certain difficulties. And in this matter, the most important thing is unity, solidarity, not hurting each other, listening to each other. We are strong when we are more united and will succeed, when the perception of all of us is the same, namely, to act and do what we have to do for the sake of the Republic of Armenia."

Addressing Parish Priest Fr. Datev Harutyunian, the President expressed the wish that "the Church continued to be guided by the Christian values that it had always been guided by." "This is a very important mission that is actually very hard to accomplish in today's complex world. We face challenges as Christians, and we shouldn’t be at enmity with other religions during these challenges. We, as Armenians, have been able to maintain our existence because we are a truly religiously tolerant nation. Our opposing countries always try to present that our struggle against them has been religious. However, in fact, our struggle in our history has not been religious. We have been a religiously tolerant people. Especially in the Middle East and the Arab world, we are also accepted because we have great religious tolerance. And I hope that we will follow this path, because our preachers, in the person of the Armenian Apostolic Church, could not lead us in any other way," the President said, wishing everyone success and many achievements.