His-Holiness-Catholicos-of-All-Armenians-Karekin-II-1 — Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II

Armenia & Karabakh church-state relations Politics

Pashinyan Threatens Force Against Armenian Church Head

June 26, 2025

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The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

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By Robert Zargarian

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday, June 26, threatened to forcibly remove Catholicos Karekin II from his Echmiadzin headquarters if the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church continues to ignore his demands to resign.

Pashinyan stepped up his nearly monthlong campaign against Karekin and other senior clerics after the church expressed “deep concern” over Wednesday’s arrests of Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan and 14 of his supporters accused of plotting to seize power through “terrorist acts.”

Galstanyan, who led last year massive antigovernment demonstrations in Yerevan, denies the accusations. Armenia’s leading opposition groups have likewise described the case as politically motivated, dismissing Pashinyan’s claims that security services have foiled a coup attempt.

The church’s Supreme Spiritual Council cast doubt on the credibility of the coup allegations in a statement issued late on Wednesday following an emergency meeting chaired by Karekin.

“Public trust in the legal process is undermined by the fact that from the outset the prime minister of the Republic of Armenia and various representatives of the ruling party have sought – through public statements with evident political intent – to direct the actions of law-enforcement authorities,” read the statement.

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“Equally deplorable is the deliberate attempt to artificially associate this legal process with the Church and to exploit the name of the Mother See – an approach that fits squarely within the broader context of the anti-Church campaign initiated by the current authorities,” it said, adding that the Mother See “will pursue justice through all lawful means.”

Pashinyan responded the following morning by reiterating his demands for Karekin to vacate the seat of the Catholicos in Echmiadzin.

“If he does not leave voluntarily, the faithful flock of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church will remove him, in a Christian manner,” the premier warned in a social media post.

A deputy chairman of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, Vahagn Aleskanyan, accused the top clergy of “supporting the terrorists” and said Karekin must be “thrown out” of his headquarters.

The threats were construed by some opposition activists as a prelude to a violent assault on the Mother See. One of them, lawyer Ruben Melikyan, claimed that Pashinyan will order plainclothes law-enforcement officers to storm the official residence of the Catholicos.

“We must be ready to leave all our affairs at any moment and go to the Mother See to protect our sacred relics, our Armenian identity, and our God-given right to breathe and exist,” Melikyan wrote on Facebook.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Topics: church-state relations, Politics

People: Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II, Nikol Pashinyan

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Pashinyan already raised fears of such a seizure on June 10 when he pledged to set up a special body tasked with replacing Karekin II. Opposition groups called the move unconstitutional, saying that the Armenian Church is legally separated from the state. They urged supporters to be ready to rally in Echmiadzin in support of Karekin.

Karekin received on June 11 a hero’s welcome from hundreds of people, most of them opposition supporters, at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport on his return from a short trip abroad. He again condemned Pashinyan’s efforts to depose him during a religious festival held in Echmiadzin on June 22.

Pashinyan’s relationship with the Armenian Church has increasingly deteriorated since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Karekin and other senior clergymen have joined the opposition in blaming him for Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war and Azerbaijan’s recapture of Karabakh in 2023.

Pashinyan began accusing them of breaching their vows of celibacy right after Karekin attended and addressed late last month an international conference in Switzerland on the preservation of Karabakh’s Armenian religious and cultural heritage. The conference organized by the World Council of Churches was denounced by Azerbaijan’s top Shia Muslim cleric close to the government.

Pashinyan’s detractors say that he launched his campaign against the church in an effort to please Azerbaijan and/or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe. The premier has denied that.

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