The decision was announced late on Tuesday more than two weeks after Garegin dismissed Bishop Gevorg Saroyan as head of the church’s Masyatsotn Diocese encompassing parts of Armenia’s southern Ararat province. With Pashinian’s encouragement, Saroyan refused to obey the decision and went on to challenge it in court.
Police remain deployed around the offices of the diocese primate in an apparent effort to help Saroyan continue to occupy it. The latter has stepped up his verbal attacks on Garegin in interviews with pro-government media.
“Bishop Gevorg Saroyan has violated his vow of obedience through canonical deviations and irregular actions,” Garegin’s office said in a statement.
Saroyan’s defrocking was formally recommended by the church’s Supreme Spiritual Council that met in Echmiadzin earlier on Tuesday. Saroyan, who had been ordained as bishop by Garegin, did not publicly react to it as of Wednesday evening. He could not be reached for comment.
Only 4 of the 24 parish priests serving in the Masyatsotn Diocese have remained loyal to Saroyan. Some of the others have claimed that local government officials and other Pashinian loyalists in two provincial communities pressured them to pledge allegiance to the sacked primate.
Saroyan openly joined in Pashinian’s campaign to oust the Catholicos in November. He denounced the campaign and ruled out any defections among the top clergy earlier in 2025.
“If you go against the church hierarchy’s decisions and positions, you become an oathbreaker,” he said in the summer.
Pashinian issued on January 3 a joint statement with Saroyan and the nine other renegade bishops and archbishops in which he pledged to keep up the pressure on Garegin II in his official capacity as prime minister. The move added to his critics’ accusations that he is violating constitutional provisions guaranteeing the independence of the ancient church and its separation from the state. The premier denies the accusations repeated by the Supreme Spiritual Council.
Citing the government pressure, the church’s Mother See announced last week that a delayed emergency conference of Armenian bishops will be held next month abroad, in the Austrian city of Sankt Polten.
The gathering was originally scheduled to take place in Echmiadzin from December 10-12. Garegin postponed it because of what the Mother See described as “repressions against clergy.” The postponement followed the arrest on December 4 of a third archbishop loyal to the Catholicos and critical of the Armenian government.
The rebel bishops were quick to denounce the decision to hold the conference outside Armenia. However, one of them, Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, said afterwards that he will attend the Sankt Polten meeting slated for February 16-19. Derderian heads a church diocese in the western United States.