RA premier`s attacks on AAC weaken democracy in Armenia - ex-official 

ArmInfo. Grigor Hovhannisyan, former Armenian Ambassador to the United States and Mexico and former Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia, is confident that Yerevan can integrate into Europe without making the Armenian Apostolic Church a scapegoat.

In his article for Le Figaro, Hovhannisyan recalled that Armenian  Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, speaking before the European  Parliament, pointed to the Church's responsibility for the country's  security instability.

"On March 11, 2026, during an official session of the European  Parliament in the Louisa Weiss Hall in Strasbourg, the Armenian Prime  Minister presented a familiar European narrative: peace,  reconciliation, and the declared 'European choice' for his country.  The scene was highly symbolic. However, behind this carefully  orchestrated diplomacy, a disturbing subtext was perceptible: a  speech that not only defended a political line but also viewed an  important component of Armenia's moral and civic landscape as an  adversary. It is not uncommon for leaders to confront their domestic  critics abroad. What is unusual is that they do so by casting a  shadow of suspicion on the country's main religious institution, one  of the most influential European venues. In Strasbourg, the Prime  Minister targeted the Armenian Apostolic Church-an institution that,  regardless of political differences, enjoys exceptional public trust  and significant social influence, as polls consistently show," the  Armenian diplomat stated.

Hovhannisyan recalled that the Armenian Church is not a local group  for common interests, but one of the oldest Christian institutions in  the world, founded on the apostolic tradition of Saints Thaddeus and  Bartholomew and rooted in the civilizational choices that predated  the modern state. The diplomat added that its spiritual center is  Holy Etchmiadzin, but its influence is global: historical patriarchal  sees in Jerusalem and Constantinople; the Catholicosate of the Great  House of Cilicia; dioceses and parishes throughout Europe, North  America, the Middle East, and beyond; and ongoing participation in  the ecumenical movement, particularly through membership in the World  Council of Churches since 1962.

"This global dimension is crucial. What is said about the Church in  Yerevan resonates in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Milan, Geneva, London,  Athens, Thessaloniki, Brussels, Amsterdam, Vienna, Bucharest, Sofia,  Nicosia, Barcelona; in Toronto, Quebec, Washington, New York,  Michigan, Chicago, Boca Raton, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San  Diego-among countless other communities where citizens of Armenian  descent, taxpayers, professionals, and voters remain attached to the  Mother Church as a vector of identity, memory, and moral continuity,"  the diplomat noted.

According to him, the Church can support reconciliation while  simultaneously affirming that peace cannot be based on silence and  that displaced persons are not simply an appendage. "The governance  of the Church is also often misunderstood. It is not a monolithic  structure governed by authoritarian rule. Over the centuries, it has  developed mechanisms of participation and accountability, including  the participation of lay people alongside the clergy in major  assemblies and in the elections of the Catholicos and Patriarch of  the Armenian Apostolic Church. Whatever one's opinion of the  relationship between Church and state, this institutional structure  warns against any attempts to portray the Church as a single  political actor, let alone as a secret faction," the diplomat added.

Hovhannisyan is certain that the Prime Minister's rhetoric in  Strasbourg crossed precisely this line. He recalled that in the  official minutes of the European Parliament, he stated that "some  clergy" violated "all rules of spiritual decency" by making  themselves "vulnerable to foreign intelligence services," asserting  that "some of them are agents of the USSR State Security Committee,"  and asserting that these clergy have become standard-bearers of the  "war party" in Armenia.

He went further, warning that "some are using the altar of Christ to  preach conflict, war, and/or civil violence in Armenia," adding that  such behavior is "unacceptable in any democratic country." "This is  not simply political criticism. In the language of political science,  this is tantamount to securitization: a process in which a social  institution is redefined as a security threat, thereby justifying  exceptional measures-investigations, restrictions, bans,  detentions-in the name of "state stability." Once this structure is  established, the law, as a rule, follows policy, and not the other  way around," Hovhannisyan is confident.

"The context is clear. Armenia's recent history has been marked by  the 2020 war, the collapse of Armenian autonomy in Nagorno-Karabakh,  and the mass exodus following Azerbaijan's military operation in  September 2023. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe  noted that more than 100,600 Armenians-the entire Armenian population  of Nagorno-Karabakh-left the region in a matter of days, citing  "well- founded allegations and suspicions" of ethnic cleansing. For  many Armenians, this is not just a geopolitical blow, but a  civilizational wound: the loss of homes, churches, cemeteries,  manuscripts, and places where faith and history have been intertwined  for centuries. At such moments, the voice of the Church is never  purely "political"; it is pastoral and memorial, speaking on behalf  of the displaced when official rhetoric turns cautious. The Church  can support reconciliation while affirming that peace cannot be based  on the erasure of memory, and that displaced persons are not just a  footnote," Hovhannisyan concluded.