By Susan Badalian and Ruzanna Stepanian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Two jailed archbishops have strongly condemned a dozen of their colleagues who have effectively joined Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s efforts to depose the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II.
Eight of the rebellious bishops and archbishops met with Pashinyan on November 27 after issuing a joint statement that accused Karekin of covering up a sex scandal involving another archbishop, who is loyal to him and highly critical of Pashinyan. In another statement issued at the weekend and also signed by two other senior clerics, they urged Karekin to “voluntarily retire” to spare the church “unnecessary upheavals.”
Karekin’s entourage and other priests rejected the appeal, saying that its signatories have been either co-opted or forced into submission by Pashinyan. Archbishops Mikael Ajapahyan and Bagrat Galstanyan, both of whom are vocal critics of Pashinyan, condemned them in even stronger terms in a joint statement issued from prison.
“Before our eyes and in our presence, each of [the 10 bishops] had not missed a chance to flatter and cozy up to His Holiness the Patriarch, under whose paternal care they had received the highest titles and positions in the church despite being absolutely unworthy of that, of which their shameful behavior is a telling testimony. If His Holiness made a mistake in anything, it was in fact his trust in them,” read the statement published on Monday, December 1.
“It is possible and perhaps even necessary to disagree with His Holiness the Patriarch on everything — something which they have never done in the past 26 years [of Karekin’s rule] and, on the contrary, have sucked up to him —whereas we have done it many times, subjecting ourselves to the Patriarch’s rebuke and discontent,” it said.
