Christian Solidarity International (CSI) rejects Prime Minister Pashinyan’s report in its entirety, and urges his government to stop persecuting the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church.
Statement from Christian Solidarity International (CSI)
The Government of Armenia has issued a report “on the crisis that has emerged in the church as a result of the actions of the de facto head of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church and a number of senior clergy, and on ways to resolve it.”
Christian Solidarity International (CSI) has examined this report and rejects it in its entirety. Its authorship, its methodology and the motives behind it seriously undermine its findings. The report is also an affront to the well-established principle of Church autonomy, guaranteed by both Armenian and international law.
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Contrary to what the report states, the Church crisis is one of the Government’s own making. The report has been published as part of a sustained, state-sponsored campaign against the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church (AAHC), a Church that has endured for more than 1,700 years and has long stood in defence of the Armenian nation.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan seeks to overthrow His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, and to bring the Church under state control, a goal he has pursued for more than a year. His plan to remove the Catholicos featured in his party’s election manifesto and is now written into his Government’s programme. The report also follows the politically motivated arrests of senior clerics, spurious criminal charges against the Catholicos and six bishops, and government-backed efforts to foster splits in the Church. These and other measures violate the autonomy of the AAHC and call into question the Armenian government’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
The report is not the product of an independent inquiry or of any impartial or judicial process. It was written on the express instruction of the Prime Minister by his own press office. A government press office has no competence in theology or canon law, yet its authors quote the canons selectively and presume to pronounce on ecclesiastical matters. Some of the allegations are so grave that they should be examined by a proper tribunal, not aired in a political document issued by the Government as part of a discriminatory campaign. Indeed, by publishing such allegations while clerics, including the Catholicos, are facing trial, the Government also gravely prejudices their right to a fair hearing and to the presumption of innocence.
The report states that it relies on “open sources.” In practice, that means news sites, YouTube clips and Facebook posts, including the Prime Minister’s own. It offers almost no primary evidence, and many of the claims are unsubstantiated gossip, innuendo or hearsay. Many are made by clergy who have been disciplined by the Church, and several are long-standing opponents of the Catholicos. Where the Catholicos has not answered an accusation, his silence is treated as proof. What the report calls its “evidentiary basis” is weak. It has been assembled to justify a verdict reached long before the report was written, and it would not withstand scrutiny before any court or tribunal.
The report accuses the Catholicos of engaging in politics. It fails to acknowledge that he has acted in accordance with the Church’s exclusive mission, recognised in Armenia’s Constitution, in the spiritual life of the Armenian people and the preservation of their national identity. Nor does it say anything of the context in which the Church has spoken: the Government’s failures in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020 and the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh in 2023, the third anniversary of which falls this month. Speaking in defence of a grieving and displaced nation is not unlawful political activity. It conforms to the very role the Constitution anticipates for the Church.
Armenian law is equally clear that, although the AAHC is the national church, it is autonomous and self-governing. The State has no role in removing or replacing the Catholicos, a process that is governed wholly by the Church’s own canon law. Nor should the Government be peddling such reports to support its discriminatory campaign.
CSI calls on the Government of Armenia to withdraw the report, abandon its plan to remove the Catholicos and respect the autonomy of the AAHC. CSI also urges Armenia’s international partners—including the United States, the European Union and the Council of Europe—to remind Prime Minister Pashinyan of Armenia’s human rights obligations and to press his Government to cease interfering in the internal affairs of the Church.
John Eibner
President
Christian Solidarity International