The defrocked clergyman, Gevorg Saroyan, was one of about a dozen bishops who broke the ranks last November to join in Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s controversial campaign to oust Garegin. In early January, the latter dismissed 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 a district court. In an unprecedented injunction, the court said on January 16 that he must be reinstated pending its verdict on the lawsuit. The Catholicos ignored the order before defrocking Saroyan.
The defrocking was recommended by the church’s Supreme Spiritual Council. Six bishops and archbishops sitting on the council as well as Garegin himself were charged with obstructing the execution of the court order.
They went on trial in August. Lawyers representing them maintain that Armenian courts have no jurisdiction over internal church affairs.
The judge who issued the injunction revoked it by dismissing Saroyan’s appeal in a ruling made public on Thursday. The judge, Edgar Hovannisian, ruled that Saroyan cannot be reinstated after all because the appointment and dismissal of diocese heads is the exclusive prerogative of the Catholicos stemming from the church’s centuries-old rules and traditions.
“The court has concluded that these relations are governed by intra-ecclesiastical rules -- canon law -- and that the dispute in question is not subject to adjudication through civil legal proceedings,” said Ara Zohrabian, one of the church lawyers.
Saroyan, who continues to occupy the diocese headquarters in Masis under police protection, said he will appeal against the ruling.
“I am going to go all the way,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
It remains to be seen whether the ruling will influence another judge who reluctantly presides over Garegin’s controversial trial strongly condemned by opposition figures and other critics of the Armenian government. They say the case is part of Pashinian’s yearlong campaign against the top clergy.
Pashinian began pressuring Garegin to resign in June 2025 shortly 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 were moved to house arrest this year.
Pashinian pledged to reinvigorate his campaign after winning disputed parliamentary elections held in June. The church and its backers view it as a gross violation of the church’s separation from the state guaranteed by Armenia’s constitution and other laws.