'We Are Citizens of This Country'

'TEHRAN -- From the choir loft, a haunting aria rises and falls through an air thick with ceremony and incense. At the altar, candles illuminate a large painting of the Madonna and Child. It is nearly midnight on New Year's Eve, yet it is standing room only at St. Sarkis Church in downtown Tehran.

Here some of the faithful from an estimated population of 100,000 Armenian Christians in Iran come to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

The Armenians say they've been in Iran for hundreds of years. Many were brought by force, enslaved by Persian ruler Agha Mohammad Khan during his wars in the Caucasus.

But now many claim Iran as their own.

"We identify ourselves with Iranian society and nationality because Armenians have been living here for centuries and centuries," says Bishop Sebouh Sarkissian of the Archdiocese of Tehran. "Sometimes they call us religious minorities -- a word I've never liked, even hated, because we are not a religious minority. We are citizens of this country.""
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