Following a three-day meeting in Austria which Garegin was not allowed by the authorities to attend, they also demanded the immediate release of three archbishops and one bishop arrested last year amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s controversial efforts to depose the Catholicos.
“We, the bishops of the Armenian Church, reaffirm our fidelity to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and to the Catholicos of All Armenians as the visible symbol and guarantor of the unity, reconciliation and concord of the Church,” read a joint statement released by them on Thursday night.
The emergency meeting of the church’s worldwide top clergy was originally scheduled to take place in Echmiadzin from December 10-12. Garegin postponed and then moved it to the Austrian town of Sankt Polten due to the government crackdown.
An Armenian law-enforcement agency indicted the Catholicos and six other bishops and banned them from leaving the country ahead of the rescheduled meeting. Pashinian implicitly pledged to obstruct it on February 13.
The meeting went ahead on Tuesday, even though its status was downgraded by the church’s Echmiadzin-based Mother See due to Garegin’s absence. Garegin addressed its participants via video link, while the Lebanon-based Catholicos Aram I, the number two figure in the church hierarchy, as well as the Armenian patriarchs of Jerusalem and Istanbul sent written messages of support.
Armenia - Masked officers of the National Security Service raid the Echmiadzin headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church, 27 June, 2025.
The resulting statement signed by the participants condemned the “fabricated” charges levelled against Garegin and acten indicted bishops and archbishops. It said the authorities in Yerevan must free four of those clerics held in prison or under house arrest and end other “repressions against clergy and the nationally elected Catholicos of All Armenians.”
The statement also urged the authorities to “act exclusively in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, its legislation and international law, and remain faithful to proclaimed democratic principles, guaranteeing freedom of conscience, religion and belief in the country.”
Armenian law guarantees the autonomy of the ancient church and its separation from the state. Pashinian has been accused by the church and other critics of violating these legal provisions throughout his campaign against the Catholicos. He formally pledged last month to keep trying to oust Garegin in his capacity as prime minister after again meeting with a dozen other bishops and archbishops who broke ranks last November to join his campaign.
The rebel clerics denounced the decision to hold the episcopal meeting outside Armenia. However, one of them, Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, not only attended the Sankt Polten meeting but also signed the joint statement by its participants. The statement also appealed to the “erring” pro-Pashinian bishops, saying that they should “refrain from anti-canonical actions, weakening steps and separatist manifestations which threaten to cause schism.”
Switzerland - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets Armenian-American businessman Noubar Afeyan, Davos, January 22, 2026.
Pashinian’s campaign is causing growing criticism not only in Armenia but also its worldwide Diaspora. On February 11, eight prominent members of the Armenian communities in the United States and Europe issued a statement saying that his “attacks” on the church pose “direct threats to all Armenians around the world.” Pashinian responded by accusing them of plotting to remove the seat of the Catholicos from Armenia and seizing church treasures kept in Echmiadzin. He offered no proof of the allegation laughed off by the Mother See.
Pashinian 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. His latest allegations directed at Diaspora figures in the West raised even more questions about his real motives.
Pashinian began his campaign last May right after Garegin accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during an international conference in Switzerland. His detractors say he wants to please Azerbaijan or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe.