YEREVAN: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Tuesday urged followers of the influential Armenian Apostolic Church to help unseat its spiritual leader, Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II.
Relations between Pashinyan and the church leadership have sharply deteriorated in recent years.
Garegin II repeatedly called for Pashinyan’s resignation following Armenia’s disastrous military defeats to arch-foe Azerbaijan over the then-disputed Karabakh region.
The loss of Karabakh after Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in 2023 has divided Armenia, as its neighbour demands sweeping concessions in exchange for lasting peace.
Last year, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan led mass protests accusing Pashinyan of ceding territory to Azerbaijan -- a movement that ultimately failed to topple the prime minister.
Now Pashinyan has launched an unprecedented challenge to Garegin II, urging believers on social media to form a “coordination group” to organise the “liberation” of the church and elect a new Catholicos.
“We need to create a coordination group to handle the organisational aspects of this agenda,“ Pashinyan said on Telegram, specifying that members should be clergy and lay followers.
Pashinyan and his wife in late May alleged that the Catholicos has a child which prompted fierce opposition criticism and calls for the couple’s excommunication.
Armenia -- the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion in the 4th century -- grants the Armenian Apostolic Church special constitutional status and the church wields considerable influence in Armenian society.
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