Pashinyan risks miscalculation: the prime minister "deposed" the patriarch

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan today, June 10, in his Telegram channel noted the need to take active measures to "liberate" the Patriarchate of the Mother See of Etchmiadzin and organize new elections of the Catholicos of All Armenians. To implement the plan, the head of the Government of the republic initiated the creation of a coordination group.

According to him, the members of the group can be those followers of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) who "wholeheartedly believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, have read the Bible from beginning to end at least once in their lives, have observed Lent at least once in the last five years, pray every day and believe that The agenda of the renovation of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin proceeds from the interests of the Armenian Apostolic Church, our people, our state and corresponds to the holy tradition of our ancestors."

The members of the coordination group can be both men and women, both lay people and clergy. In the case of religious clerics, it is imperative that they do not violate the vow of celibacy, the prime minister stressed.

It is this reason — the violation of celibacy by the highest representative of the AAC — that Pashinyan adopted in the last few days of entering into an open conflict with Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II. He is charged with having a child as a result of being in a "shadow family relationship."

Since the end of last month, the leader of the "velvet revolution" of 2018 has published a series of "messages" on social networks, the essence of which initially boiled down to the fact that a certain senior representative of the AAC has a child "on the side." Last Monday, Pashinyan already stated in plain text who exactly he was talking about — the Armenian Patriarch himself. Garegin II is no longer the Catholicos of all Armenians for the Prime Minister of Armenia, Ktrich Nersisyan (the name of Garegin II in the world) should release the Patriarchate, Nikol Pashinyan announced.

Prior to that, the prime minister called on the Catholicos to clarify the issue of the presence or absence of his children and, having received no answer, personally "deposed" the current head of the AAC for himself, refusing to consider him in this status.

"Garegin II broke his voluntary vow of celibacy and has a child. This is a fact, and if Garegin II tries to deny it, I will prove it in the necessary form. Accordingly, according to the canon of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Garegin II could not be a bishop, archbishop, could not be elected and cannot be a Catholicos. Ktrich Nersisyan should release the patriarchate," Pashinyan argued.

How he sees such a "liberation", the head of the Armenian government explained earlier this Tuesday, announcing the creation of the aforementioned coordination group.

"I will take responsibility for the selection of the first ten members of the coordination group — based on interviews according to the above criteria. In the future, the group itself will determine the order of expansion, its structure and other possible issues... The formation of the coordination group will take place in a working order, until the group itself decides to declare itself. During this activity of ours, many words of temptation will be heard, we will be accused of all kinds of sins. Look at all this with the eyes of your soul, listen to the voice of our Lord Jesus Christ and act accordingly," Pashinyan summed up.

If his conflict with the Catholicos had reached a climax, let's say, in 2019, when Pashinyan's rating was at its peak and he gathered several thousand and even tens of thousands of people on the street with one call in social networks to resolve issues of "revolutionary significance," his declared "liberation" of the AAC from the acting Catholicos would have occurred, perhaps, in in a more radical form. First of all, in the form of mass pickets of outraged citizens near the residence of the Armenian Patriarch in Etchmiadzin (located 20 km north of Yerevan). However, the current circumstances dictate Pashinyan's choice of "positional battles." The prime minister decided to deploy them a year before the parliamentary elections, which are due to take place on June 7, 2026.

After Armenia's defeat in the second Karabakh war in the fall of 2020, Garegin II moved into fierce opposition to the government of Nikol Pashinyan, which earned the latter's reciprocity. On December 8, 2020, a month after the end of the war, he called on Pashinyan to resign. Since that time, the Catholicos and the Prime Minister have not communicated at all, avoiding joint participation in official events. Mutual irritation from that moment was transformed into outright personal hostility.

In an interview with journalists on April 20, 2023, answering the relevant question, the Catholicos called his call for the prime minister to resign indefinite. The head of the AAC explained then that the "paternal covenant" he voiced after the 44-day war in Karabakh was due to an attempt to overcome and resolve the crisis that had arisen in the country.

Garegin II and his supporters inside the AAC and beyond its canonical limits are currently trying to repel the attack of the authorities. Most often it is indicated fixed in The Armenian Constitution provides for the separation of church and state and their de facto non-interference in each other's affairs. Pashinyan's like-minded people respond to this with a reminder of the interference of the church in state affairs of a political nature.

A vivid confirmation of this, according to their version, is the anti-government activity of the primate of the Tavush diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan (Bagrat Srbazan) in the spring of 2024, when under the banners of the Tavush movement for the Motherland (later renamed the Holy Struggle) deployed by him Nikol Pashinyan was given a direct challenge — the demand for immediate resignation from the prime minister's post.

The blessing requested by Bagrat Srbazan from Garegin II and received for organizing a protest movement was the trigger for the authorities. At a press conference on May 7, 2024, Nikol Pashinyan stated that the Catholicos actually heads a political movement, the ultimate beneficiary of which is the country's ex-president Robert Kocharyan.

Opponents of the authorities, in turn, call this socio-political episode the struggle of the laity, not the clergy, for the "salvation of the fatherland," even if these citizens are in the rank of high-ranking ministers of the church.

These days, more decisive formulations against Pashinyan are coming from the AAC. It is argued that the "liberation" of the Patriarchate from Garegin II initiated by him resembles "terrorism at the state level", is fraught with internal clashes and destabilization.

The first attempt, we note, rather timid and without Pashinyan's direct participation, to overthrow the current Catholicos ended in vain in the first months after the "velvet revolution". Then a public movement appeared under the banner "New Armenia, new Patriarch". A group of activists, including several clergymen, claimed that Garegin II was corrupt and had a thriving business. However, there was no mention of his problems with the observance of the vow of celibacy.

Pashinyan reacted very restrainedly to such attempts against the Catholicos at that time, because there were still many months before the aforementioned "paternal covenant" of Garegin II for the prime minister to resign voluntarily.

"We are dealing here with an internal church issue. So far, in my opinion, he has not gone beyond the church," Pashinyan said about the actions of the activists of the New Armenia, New Patriarch movement.

To date, as can be understood, according to the prime Minister, the issue has ceased to be an internal church issue.

There is a cold political calculation behind his information attack on the Catholicos. Garegin II actually became one of the key figures in the "anti-Pashinyan" camp, and de facto in the status of untouchable, given his church rank. It is necessary to do something about this, and already now, a year before the elections, the acting prime minister believes.

If the deposition of the current head of the Armenian Apostolic Church (Garegin II was elevated to Catholicos of all Armenians in October 1999*) takes place in practice, and not only in Pashinyan's thoughts, then this will demonstrate the dominance of the authorities in the socio-political field, providing it with advantageous starting positions before the launch of the election campaign next spring. However, it is hard to believe in Pashinyan's easy victory. Especially if he fails to enlist support within the AAC, raise a wave of protest from within, relying on a group of "defector clergy."

In the worst-case scenario for the head of government, his political calculation during the pre-election period may turn into a painful miscalculation with all the consequences that follow for the ruling Civil Contract party and its leader personally. First of all, in the form of a significant collapse in the rating of the authorities on the eve of the elections.

The Catholicos of All Armenians is elected by the National Church Council, the supreme authority of the Armenian Apostolic Church. If the Patriarch's throne is vacant, the Locum Tenens of the Catholicos shall convene an extraordinary meeting of the National Church Council within six months to elect a new head of the AAC. The Council is convened in The Mother See of Etchmiadzin.