His Grace Bishop Hovakim Manukyan (baptismal name Vartkes) was born on October 19, 1976, in the village of Voskehat, Republic of Armenia. He entered the Vaskenian Theological Seminary at Lake Sevan in 1994 and in 1999 transferred to the Gevorkian Theological Seminary at Holy Etchmiadzin and graduated in 2000. He also took a course at the Bossey Ecumenical School, Geneva, Switzerland, in 1998 and a course in Social Theology at the Diaconal School in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2001.
He was ordained to the diaconate on July 16, 2000. Upon his graduation in 2000, he was assigned to serve in the Inter-Church Relations Department of the Armenian Church. In 2001, he successfully defended his thesis entitled “Extracts from the History of the Coptic Orthodox Church”. He was ordained as a celibate priest in November 2001, and given the priestly name of Hovakim. From 2002-2004, he studied at the Spiritual Academy in Sergiev Posad, Moscow.
In 2004, he was reappointed to serve in the Inter-Church Department of the Mother See, and as Director of the Inter-Church Office in August, 2005. He presented and successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Ecumenism in the 20th Century and the Armenian Church” and, in 2006, received the rank of Archimandrite (Vartabed).
Since 2005, he has served as a member of the Trustee Committee of the Armenian Round Table Charitable Foundation, and as a member of the Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) from 2004 to 2009. Since 2004, he has served as the Ecumenical Officer of the Armenian Church to the World Council of Churches. He is the author of several scientific, public and apologetic articles.
In June 2015, Bishop Hovakim was appointed Primate of the Armenian Churches of the United Kingdom and Repiblic of Ireland.