YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — The Armenian Apostolic Church’s relationship with Armenia’s government has become merely “ceremonial” during Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s rule, Catholicos Karekin II said in a newspaper interview published on Tuesday, February 14.
“The relations between the authorities and the Church are of a ceremonial nature,” he told the Hraparak daily. ”Yes, there are some disagreements with the authorities.”
Karekin refused to go into details. He said instead that the church has remained faithful to its traditional “calling and mission towards its believing children” and committed to the “strengthening of Armenian statehood.”
“The positions expressed by the Church in relation to national and public issues should be understood in this spirit,” added its supreme head.
The ancient church, to which the vast majority of Armenians nominally belong, enjoyed strong government support until the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinyan to power. The prime minister’s frosty relationship with Karekin has only deteriorated since then.
Karekin and other senior clergymen joined the Armenian opposition in calling for Pashinyan’s resignation following Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan. The prime minister openly attacked them when he campaigned for the June 2021 parliamentary elections.
