At a meeting of the US Federal Commission on International Religious Freedom, Father Serob Azaryan addressed issues of religious freedom in Armenia and the persecution of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Father Azaryan noted that under Nikol Pashinyan, the Armenian Apostolic Church is currently being systematically persecuted by its own government.
“This is not just a political dispute. This is blatant religious persecution that demands your attention and action.”
Conclusion of Church Leaders
Currently, four high-ranking clergymen of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church are in prison or under house arrest. Archbishops Mikael Ajapahian, Bagrat Galstanian, Arshak Khachatryan, and Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan, all holding important positions in the Church, have been arrested on dubious charges. These clergymen are not criminals. They are dedicated clergymen of our Orthodox faith. People who dedicated their entire lives to the spiritual well-being of their people are now being silenced for defending their Church and nation.
His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, is subjected to relentless persecution, public slander, and daily harassment by the Pashinyan regime. The Catholicos, like his predecessors, whose sacred ministry led the Armenian people throughout the world through foreign invasions, the Ottoman invasion, the Genocide, and Soviet persecution, is today seen as an obstacle to be overcome and a voice to be silenced.
The message sent by the imprisonment of the entire clergy is crystal clear: stand up to the authorities, defend the integrity of your Church, and you will be punished, imprisoned, or persecuted.
Violating Sacred Boundaries
The Pashinyan government has encroached on forbidden territory, directly interfering in the ritual and administrative life of the Church. Every Sunday, against the will of the priests, Pashinyan himself and his government attempted to dictate what should be commemorated during the Divine Liturgy. How the prayers are performed. Which parts are recited and which are omitted. Who is a bishop and who is not. How the Church should fulfill its most sacred functions. This is not governance. This is sacrilege. No secular authority should ever wield such power over the spiritual life of a religious community. In addition to the imprisoned clergy, the Prime Minister ordered that the Catholicos and six other bishops be barred from leaving Armenia to attend the Bishops’ Conference, including two bishops with American citizenship, Archbishop Haikazun Najarian and Bishop Vahan Hovhannisyan, who are members of the Supreme Spiritual Council. This is unacceptable.
In the most shocking lie yet, Prime Minister Pashinyan told the Armenian Church that any spiritual sermon of the Apostolic Church is publicly compared to Islamist terrorism. Let’s pause for a moment and consider the gravity of this slander. This is the same Church that preserved Christianity at the cost of countless martyrs throughout the 1,400-year history of Islamic rule. It survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and seventy years of Soviet atheistic repression. Now this Church is accused of Islamist extremism by the Armenian Prime Minister, who violates constitutional laws. This is not just absurd, but a calculated and deliberate attempt to discredit the Church’s authority through slander and insults.
These events remind us of the years of persecution and bloodshed that befell the Armenian Church when, in 1938, amid the Soviet terror, the Bolsheviks assassinated Catholicos Khoren I. The clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church were arrested, tortured, and most executed. Churches were looted and desecrated under the pretext of searching for “treasures.” The goal was, and remains, to destroy the Church as a sovereign religious and moral pillar.
A Question of Conscience
Imagine for a moment that any rabbi were imprisoned, any Catholic bishop, any Anglican prelate arrested, or any imam detained solely for defending their faith against government interference. The international outcry would be fierce and immediate. Resolutions would be passed, sanctions discussed, and appropriate diplomatic pressure applied.
But when this has been happening in Armenia for months, when archbishops are being imprisoned, when the Patriarch has been slandered and, along with him, almost all bishops have been banned from leaving the country, when the Armenian Apostolic Church is being systematically attacked, where is the world’s reaction? Where is the outrage of American or Western officials? The silence is deafening and testifies to an unacceptable double standard in recognizing and condemning religious persecution.
Silence is complicity.
There is a moral principle that must guide our response: when clergy are imprisoned for their faith, when the Catholicos is publicly slandered, attacked, and persecuted.