Petre Kharischirashvili

Peter Kharischirashvili (in , born in 1804 or 1805 in Akhaltsikhe, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire – 7 October 1890 in Constantinople) was a Georgian Catholic hieromonk, theologian, scientist and founder of the Servites of the Immaculate Conception.

Biography

Early years Peter Kharischirashvili was born in 1804 or 1805 in Akhaltsikhe, according to most sources. Meanwhile, other sources give his birth date as April 20, 1818.

He studied at the parochial school and later went to study at the seminary in Gyumri, and finally to Rome to study Superior Theology.

Priesthood and last years in Georgian lands In 1842 he returned to Akhaltsikhe, there he was ordained, and was appointed assistant archimandrite to Pavle Shahqulianis.

According to Father Christopher Zugger, nine Servite missionaries from Constantinople, headed by Exarch Shio Batmanishvili, came to the newly independent Democratic Republic of Georgia to permanently establish Catholicism of the Byzantine Rite in Old Georgian there, and by 1929 their faithful had grown to 8,000. Their mission came to an end with the arrests of Exarch Shio and his priests by the Soviet secret police in 1928, their imprisonment in the Gulag at Solovki prison camp, and their subsequent murder by Joseph Stalin's NKVD at Sandarmokh in 1937.