Etchmiadzin is the oldest cathedral in the world. According to Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, it is "generally regarded" as the oldest cathedral in the world, while historian Steven Gertz wrote in Christianity Today that Etchmiadzin is regarded as such "according to some scholars." Notable visitors Early European visitors to Etchmiadzin who gave descriptions of the cathedral included Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (before 1668), Jean Chardin (1673), Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (c. 1700), James Morier (1810–16), Robert Ker Porter (1817–20), Friedrich Parrot (1829), August von Haxthausen (1843), Moritz Wagner (1843), James Bryce (1876), H. F. B. Lynch (1893). Many prominent individuals have visited Etchmiadzin, including Russian diplomat and playwright Alexander Griboedov (1828), Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky (1849), Russian poets Valery Bryusov and Andrei Bely (1929), Fridtjof Nansen (1925), Armenian American writer William Saroyan (1976), English composer Benjamin Britten, Russian singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky, Russian-American poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky, Andrei Sakharov, Cher, Alain Delon, Kim Kardashian and many others. Religious leaders like Patriarch Cyril of Bulgaria (1967), Archbishops of Canterbury Donald Coggan (1977) and George Carey (1993), Patriarch 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) have visited Etchmiadzin. Francis gave a prayer at the cathedral on 24 June 2016, where he called the cathedral "a witness to the history of your people and the centre from which its spirituality radiates." Leaders of several countries, such as Russia (Vladimir Putin in 2005), France (Jacques Chirac in 2006 and Nicolas Sarkozy in 2011), Georgia (Mikheil Saakashvili in 2004, Giorgi Margvelashvili in 2014), Romania (Emil Constantinescu in 1998), Lebanon (Michel Aoun, 2018), Germany (Angela Merkel, 2018), and royalty, such as Nicholas I of Russia (1837), King Mahendra of Nepal (1958), Prince Charles (2013) have visited the cathedral as part of their state or private visits to Armenia. Cultural depictions The coat of arms of Russian-administered Erivan (Yerevan), approved in 1843, featured the cathedral. The Etchmiadzin monthly, the official periodical of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin founded in 1944, features the cathedral on its cover page as the logo. In the 1991 film Mayrig, directed by French-Armenian director Henri Verneuil, footage of the cathedral is shown when Azad Zakarian, the main character and a son of Armenian genocide survivors, is being questioned about his faith in a Catholic school.