VaticanConference 1 — Speakers at the “Christianity in Azerbaijan” conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University

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Armenian Church, Civic Organizations Condemn Rome Conference on ‘Christianity in Azerbaijan’

April 15, 2025

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The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

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YEREVAN (Combined Sources) — Various segments of the Armenian Church condemned the actions of the Roman Catholic Church for a conference organized by Azerbaijan in Rome on April 10, discussing the history of Christianity in Azerbaijan. In the conference, the Azerbaijani government’s consistent lies attributing Albanian origins to clearly Armenian churches were advanced.

An inscription on a wall at the Gandzasar Monastery in Artsakh

The conference was organized by the Baku International Center for Multiculturalism, the Institute of History and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijan Embassy to the Holy See, and the Albanian-Udi Christian Community of Azerbaijan.

The Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin in a statement noted, “On April 10, at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, an event entitled ‘Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity’ was held at the initiative of the Embassy of Azerbaijan to the Holy See and several Azerbaijani organizations, with the participation of representatives from various countries.

“During the event, staged by the Azerbaijani propaganda machine, attempts were made to deny the Armenian origin of the historical and cultural heritage of Armenia and Artsakh, and to distort historical facts with the malicious intention of appropriating this heritage in the future.

This event comes amidst the international community’s failure to properly assess the genocidal actions carried out by Azerbaijan, the violation of the fundamental rights of all Armenians forcibly displaced from Artsakh, the illegal and degrading treatment of Armenian prisoners of war held in Baku, the appropriation of Artsakh’s spiritual and cultural heritage, and the complete erasure of Armenian traces,” reads the statement issued by the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin.

In its statement, the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin noted that it will take the necessary steps within the framework of inter-church communication.

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Earlier, the team of the Monitoring the Cultural Heritage of Artsakh program had raised the alarm about the conference, noting that no Armenian studies organization had been informed about the conference until the last minute.

“Dozens of specialists from various countries (Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Russia, Poland, Italy, Georgia, Germany, France, Canada, the US and Lithuania) were assembled and recruited to exclude Armenian history and Armenian culture. Monuments that are unmistakably Armenian and bear hundreds of Armenian inscriptions — such as Amaras, Gandzasar, Dadivank, and others — are being presented as Albanian. It is also incomprehensible to us that some well-known researchers in the field chose to participate, despite noticing that no Armenian scholars were present and not a single word was said about Armenians,” read the statement released by the Artsakh Cultural Heritage Monitoring project team.

The Divan of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem also condemned the Vatican for the international conference.

“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,” the Patriarchate’s statement noted.

It continued, “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.”

In Lebanon, Catholicos Aram I of the Great House of Cilicia sent a letter to Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Topics: Caucasian Albanians, historiography, misinformation

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In his message, Catholicos Aram I expressed deep sorrow and protest regarding the conference. He criticized the conference for being organized unilaterally, noting that the topics discussed and the speakers involved, particularly those related to the Armenian Church, were unfair, especially given the absence of Armenian speakers, the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia reported .

He also highlighted the active and organized presence of the Armenian Church in Artsakh to this day. In his letter, Catholicos Aram brought attention to the forced displacement of the indigenous Armenians from Artsakh, which was orchestrated by the Azerbaijani authorities as part of their genocidal policy. At the same time, he acknowledged the Vatican authorities’ positive stance regarding the Armenians of Artsakh.

Although the event was marketed as being held in the Vatican, which critics argued was intended to give it a sheen of credibility, it was actually held at the Pontifical Gregorian University, a private Jesuit university in Rome founded by the Holy See.

A representative of the university later told the Armenian media outlet CivilNet that it had no affiliation with the conference beyond renting space for it to be held.

The bulk of the conference appears to have been dedicated to a fringe historical theory, typically credited to 20th-century Azerbaijani historian Ziya Bunyadov, that attempted to distort the ancient history of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh by instead claiming that ancient monuments were created by Caucasian Albanians — referring to a Christian kingdom that existed in the South Caucasus in the first millennium CE.

The theory has not been widely accepted outside of Azerbaijan, and has been criticized as an attempt to rewrite history in order to deny the ancient presence of Armenians in the region.

The bulk of the speakers at the conference were Azerbaijani, although one was a missionary from the Albanian Orthodox Church, which CivilNet wrote was likely a mistake stemming from confusion over naming.

Eduard Habsburg, Hungary’s ambassador to the Vatican, also attended the event, drawing criticism from Armenians on social media.

(Reports from PanArmenian.net, OC-Media.org, News.am and Armenpress were used to compile this story.)

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