During the liturgy held at the church’s main cathedral in Echmiadzin, Garegin renewed his calls for Armenians, who celebrate Christmas on January 6, to adhere to their Christian faith in the face of grave external and internal challenges facing their homeland.
“Internally, our homeland is plagued by falsehoods, lawlessness, malice, vengeance, and corrupt course, which breed mistrust, indifference, hostility, and division in our society, causing weaking to the nation,” he said. “Alongside these challenges, the distortion of Christian moral perception and our traditional national spiritual values threatens our identity, weakens our national spirit, and ensnares us in the traps of sin and despair.
“Through the mystery of the Holy Nativity, a heavenly invitation is once again extended to us: to walk the Lord’s path of love, reconciliation, and righteousness. This call can only be realized through a Christian way of life. It requires that we do not sacrifice our identity, the security of our people and welfare of our homeland for the sake of personal comfort and gain. We cannot serve the common good if we are driven by vanity, lust for power, and prioritize self-interest.”
“Let us be collaborators, not adversaries, devoted servants, not abusers of position and privilege,” added Garegin.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian as well as members of his government and political team were conspicuously absent from the Christmas mass, underscoring their discord with the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Pashinian’s relationship with the ancient church, to which the vast majority of Armenians belong, has increasingly deteriorated in recent years and especially since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Garegin and other senior clergymen joined the Armenian opposition in calling for Pashinian’s resignation following Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war. They also condemned Pashinian for recognizing Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh months before Baku recaptured the region in September 2023.
The premier has accused the church of meddling in politics. The government-controlled Armenian Public Television underscored the discord by again breaking with a post-Soviet tradition and refusing to broadcast Garegin’s New Year’s Eve address to the nation just before Pashinian’s message.
In that address aired instead by several private TV channels, Garegin again signaled his continuing disapproval of Pashinian’s appeasement policy towards Azerbaijan. He warned against “concessions detrimental to the homeland.”
For his part, Pashinian claimed to have made Armenia much more secure in the past year. In that context, he touted his territorial concessions to Azerbaijan which sparked massive anti-government protests in Yerevan in May and June. The protests were led by a senior clergyman, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian.