The supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church again slammed Baku as he hosted an international inter-church conference on the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea that had brought together Christian bishops.
Addressing participants of the four-day conference representing major Christian denominations, Garegin said it is taking place in “a country that has suffered untold persecution, hardship, and trials for the sake of Christ.”
“Today, our people are also going through trials,” he said, pointing to the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war and the 2023 “forcible displacement” of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population that followed an Azerbaijani offensive.
“Azerbaijan continues to illegally hold Artsakh state officials and prisoners of war to this day. In occupied Artsakh, our centuries-old spiritual and cultural heritage, historical holy sites, are currently being destroyed and damaged and also appropriated under the false pretext of being non-Armenian,” added the Catholicos.
Garegin already denounced the “sham trials” of the former Karabakh leaders and accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during a conference hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Switzerland in May. Azerbaijan’s top Shia Muslim cleric closely linked to the government in Baku protested against “the provocative, revanchist propaganda of the Armenian Church” in a letter to the WCC.
As Garegin attended the WCC forum in Bern, Pashinian began attacking the church’s top clergy in daily social media posts that sparked an uproar from opposition leaders, prominent public figures and many ordinary citizens. He accused Garegin and other senior clergymen of having had secret sex affairs in breach of their vows of celibacy. The Armenian premier went on to demand Garegin’s resignation.
He insisted last week that he has not abandoned plans to “free” the Echmiadzin seat of the Catholicos with the help of his supporters. Pashinian’s detractors say his campaign is designed to please Azerbaijan and/or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe.