Major religious figures like Patriarch Cyril of Bulgaria (1967), Archbishops of Canterbury Donald Coggan (1977) and George Carey (1993), Ilia II of Georgia (1997, 2003), Pope John Paul II (2001), Bartholomew I of Constantinople (2001), Ignatius Zakka I Iwas (2002), Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (2010), Pope Francis (2016) visited Etchmiadzin. Pope Francis gave a prayer at the cathedral on 24 June. He called the cathedral "a witness to the history of your people and the centre from which its spirituality radiates."