“Today, the Kurds and others defend their rights and are fighting in our historical homeland, all of them have claims while Ateshyan, like the last lickspittle, licks the shoes of the Turkish authorities for the sake of his business,” – said Vardan Devrikyan, Director of the Institute of Literature named after M. Abeghyan at the RA National Academy of Sciences, in an interview with Aravot, referring to the regret of Archbishop Aram Ateshyan, General Vicar of the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, addressed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
According to him, there are certain limits – “red lines” – that cannot be crossed and Ateshyan has crossed this “red line”, “A priest like him does not exist for me. Each bishop of the Holy See should feel dirty and splashy as Ateshyan is a bishop. Today, in the whole Armenian nation, we can say that one is a thief, the other is corrupt, but we cannot say that someone is apostate. The only apostate today is this man by the name Ateshyan. It’s a shame. If he enters the Holy See Cathedral, then it should be re-consecrated, for example, when an unclean animal enters a sacred place, it was then re-consecration. Hence, wherever he visits in Armenia, these places should be re-consecration.”
Mr. Devrikyan thinks that the Holy See’s substantiations of having no right to defrock Ateshyan are groundless, “Two bishops were defrocked during the tenure of the current His Holiness, consequence, the third one happen too, especially since the sins of other two were not so big than this one’s. Those two at least are not an apostate and even had some contribution on many issues. The Supreme Pontiff, in accordance with the respective Charter of Episcopal Assembly or Supreme Council, can defrock the bishop. Another issue that if the priest enjoys a reputation in the diocese, it can lead to an appropriate counteraction but Ateshyan is such a discredited animal that he no respect with Istanbul-Armenian community, therefore, this counteraction cannot happen.”
Arpi KIRAKOSYAN
