By Edmond Y. Azadian
His Holiness Karekin II had been planning to visit Georgian Armenian communities for a long time. His visit would be only the second one since Khrimian Hairig, Catholicos of all Armenians, visited more than a century ago. On again and off again, the visit finally happened when Georgian Church authorities, and especially Georgian Patriarch Illya II, extended the invitation, when all his traps and plots were in place to intimidate his Armenian counterpart.
Georgians are known to be fun-loving people, always at the expense of others. During the last several centuries, Armenians built their capital, Tbilisi, which in the 19th century had become the Paris of the Caucasus. When the Soviet revolution came to be, it was a very handy excuse to get rid of the capitalist class — mostly Armenian — and they took over what that class had built in terms of culture, architecture, material wealth and religious institutions.
Georgia is the only other Christian nation in the Caucasus, but it has always been envious of the Armenians and thus is always plotting against Armenia, in collusion with its enemies.
It turns out that that competitive envy had also permeated the Georgian religious order, beginning from their Patriarch Illya II down to the ordinary priests usurping Armenian churches, all along and trampling human and minority rights.
In Georgia, Armenians are mostly concentrated in the capital Tbilisi and the Javakhk region. During the Soviet period and subsequent independence years, Georgians have repressed Armenians into becoming a docile community.
