Pashinian said last month that his government will unveil soon a report on the “crisis” in the church that will be examined by an ad hoc commission to be set up by the Armenian parliament. The National Assembly could then pass unspecified legal amendments relating to the church, he said.
“Our church is seized, and we must solve that problem, including by making changes to the law,” he said without specifying those changes.
Lawmakers representing the parliament’s two opposition groups ruled out their involvement in the initiative they say violates the church’s separation from the state guaranteed by Armenia’s constitution and other laws.
“We obviously have no desire to be part of such an illegal investigative commission set up by the National Assembly,” said Ishkhan Saghatelian of the Hayastan alliance led by former President Robert Kocharian.
“The political authorities have no legal powers to interfere in the church’s internal affairs, and the commission mentioned by you would therefore be illegal,” Marianna Ghahramanian of the Strong Armenia alliance told journalists.
“On the contrary, we will continue to stand with the [church’s] Mother See,” said Ghahramanian.
“The church is separated from the state, but the church is located in Armenia,” countered Eduard Aghajanian, a parliament deputy from the ruling Civil Contract party. “It cannot be beyond Armenian legislation.”
Armenia - People attend a liturgy at the Echmiadzin cathedral of the Armenian Apostolic Church, July 2, 2025.
Pashinian said recently that the report promised by him has already been drafted by a government agency regarded by his critics as one of his main propaganda mouthpieces. It paints a “terrible” picture of the state of affairs within the church, he said without elaborating.
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. He has since used different lines of attack on the church.
The premier 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.
Pashinian gave last month another reason for his campaign praised by Azerbaijani officials. He said that Armenian priests pray for the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) on Garegin’s orders during Sunday masses. They are thus turning the church into a “war propaganda institution,” he claimed.