The spiritual leader of Artsakh, Archbishop Pargev got surprised when hearing the opinion implying that people say it is wrong to keep so many churches in this poor country: “Many? Is this many? Listen, 100 years ago Armenian church had dozens of thousands of operating churches, monasteries and the people were poorer. And now we hardly have 700 churches in the world, is this many?”
Archbishop finds that of course churches need to be renovated, but it is necessary to build new churches as well: “If I go and renovate the monastery in the mountains, suppose I give 1 million USD and it has 5 visitors annually… if the benefactor says I do not renovate in this village, I want to build here exactly, however, we make him, we will not succeed, I know that from my experience. Every benefactor does whatever s/he wants, they say – I do it in my village and that is it, do not distract me.”
To our opinion that there are monasteries that are in a bad condition, even cattle reside there, is it not possible to first and foremost keep whatever we have already, Archbishop Pargev replied: “I understand, for that, a benefactor should be found, but the benefactor should wish to do that. S/he says – no, I do not want to deal with it, I want to renovate the chapel of my village, what can we do? If you can afford yourself to do it, then you should also wish to do it, is it not so? And to speak abstractly, as if let us not do this church by 8 million USD, let us go and start building a factory, but the benefactor says – I do not want to make a business, I do charity, how to persuade him or her to come and do something else? Onse says – I build only schools, do not ask money for churches from me, it fails. This is why it should be understood in a real way and not to get obsessed with those issues, they are senseless things.”
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
