In its five-year policy program publicized late on Wednesday, the government pledged to “ensure the removal of the de facto head of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church” and “carry out the election” of his temporary replacement through an unspecified “established procedure.”
Pashinian has been trying to do that since June 2025. He began pressuring Garegin to resign after the Catholicos accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during an international conference in Switzerland. Three Armenian archbishops and one bishop were arrested in the following months on different charges strongly denied by them. They all were moved to house arrest this year.
Law-enforcement authorities also indicted Garegin himself as well as six other senior clergymen in February. Earlier this month, they went on trial strongly condemned by Armenian opposition and Diaspora groups. The Catholicos has made clear that he will not step down even he is imprisoned.
Pashinian’s critics maintain that his campaign constitutes a gross violation of Armenian constitutional provisions guaranteeing the autonomy of the ancient church and its separation from the state. In an August 7 statement, the World Council of Churches (WCC) similarly deplored the “undue interference” in its internal affairs.
Pashinian has used different lines of attack on the church during his campaign praised by Azerbaijani officials. He said until December that Garegin and other top clerics at odds with him must go because they had secret sex affairs in breach of their vows of celibacy. He then began accusing them of spying for a foreign country, presumably Russia. He did not offer any proof of the allegation dismissed by Moscow.
The government’s action plan, which is due to be debated by the Armenian parliament next week, says that Garegin’s removal is necessary for ensuring the country’s “spiritual security” and neutralizing “attempts by external forces to turn the Church into a base for hybrid warfare.” It does not name those forces.
Pashinian’s Civil Contract party added a pledge to oust Garegin to its campaign manifesto for the parliamentary elections held on June 7. The church’s Mother See in Echmiadzin condemned the “unlawful” move.
“The election of the Catholicos and any changes in Church life fall exclusively within the spiritual-canonical sphere and are therefore beyond the competence of political parties and state authorities,” it said in an April 9 statement.