COMMUNIQUE FROM THE DIVAN OF THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE REGARDING AN AZERI-SPONSORED CONFERENCE AT THE VATICAN:
The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem strictly condemns the Vatican for the recent international conference titled “Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity”, held in Rome under the crude design of the Azerbaijani government and the regime’s academic-propagandistic front.
WE ASSERT THAT THIS BASELESS CONFERENCE’S GLARING EXCLUSION OF ARMENIAN SCHOLARS RENDERS IT A STATE-SPONSORED ACT OF REVISIONISM AND PSEUDO-HISTORIOGRAPHY THAT FALLS SO HUMILIATINGLY BELOW THE STANDARDS OF THE VATICAN THAT THERE IS NO PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION EXCEPT FINANCIAL INCENTIVE.
We assert that the Vatican has acted irresponsibly, allowing its academic platform to be cleverly leveraged to propagate a well-known and fabricated narrative—one that seeks to erase the historic presence of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the South Caucasus from the intellectual memory of world academia. By hosting such an event without the inclusion of Armenian scholars, the Vatican has allowed itself to become complicit with the weaponization of history against an indigenous Christian people whose contributions to global Christianity, by their own scholarly admission, are indisputable.
We further assert to the Vatican that they have witnessed a deliberate invention of antiquity: a strategy designed not only to legitimize present-day territorial claims in the Republic of Armenia, but to overwrite the presence of older civilizations whose roots run deep and whose histories are inconvenient to erase. This academic-propagandistic front of Azerbaijan seeks to construct a retroactive narrative that lends an unearned depth to their young state. This is done by overcompensating through revisionism. This conference is one of the many faces of a political project rooted in the temporal insecurity of a nation that seeks to obscure the brevity of its existence by manufacturing heritage and disguising the sacred legacies of the Armenian Church. We categorically assert that in place of genuine heritage, the academic front of this regime has offered the Vatican spectacle. In place of memory, fabrication. In place of fidelity to historical truths, a calculated arrogance that treats time as a canvas to be painted over for the sake of geopolitical posture. It is a historical narrative driven less by fact than by aspiration. It is an effort to graft the sketches of a modern statehood onto a past that does not exist.
The central thesis advanced at such conferences—that Armenian Christian monuments in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) are the legacy of a so-called “Caucasian Albanian” civilization—is not only academically indefensible but also a sinister act of historical negationism. It constitutes a direct assault on the indigenous epistemology and dignity owed to an extant people whose sacred traditions have persisted on the discussed land for millennia. Here, the result is not merely academic falsehood, but cultural omission, which systematically denies the Armenian people of indigeneity and their rightful place in Christian and civilizational history.
We call upon the Vatican to uphold the integrity of historical truth and to reject all forms of fabricated heritage and invented tradition that aim to erase the lived experience of indigenous Christian communities. We urge the Vatican to distance itself from such revisionist endeavors and to reaffirm its commitment to preserving the authenticity of the Christian tradition as it concerns the Holy and Apostolic Armenian Orthodox Church.
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We declare, as one of the four ancient and extant arms of Armenian Christianity, that this be a moment of moral clarity for all scholarship within Christendom: the truth of the Armenian past cannot be buried beneath lobbied-for and financed revisionist lies. Our churches, our monasteries, our architecture, our aesthetic, our cross-stones, our illuminated manuscripts, our liturgy, our millennial chant, our alphabet, our saints and martyrs, our ancient cemeteries, our sacred relics, our theological schools, and our people are living testimony to an Apostolic Armenian tradition that predates and will outlast the scheming ambition of those who seek to erase us from physical and intellectual memory.
DIVAN OF THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE OF JERUSALEM
