Behind Armenia’s Prayer Breakfast: Arrests And A Church Under Siege
Vishal AroraYEREVAN, Armenia — Dozens of foreign guests, mostly evangelicals from the United States, gathered under banners of faith, seated around tables with polite conversations at the Prayer Breakfast in Yerevan on Nov. 15.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stood at the podium and thanked God for leading Armenia into a new chapter of “peace,” quoting Psalms. Heads nodded and applause followed.
Behind the cameras, the national church’s role in Armenian life was being stripped away, and with it, the authority of a Christian institution that has shaped not only Armenian identity but global Christian heritage.
It was all visible in the hall.
Among the participants and speakers were Anglicans, Catholics and Baptists from Western countries. But no Armenia-based bishops from the national church were present. No one asked why one of the oldest churches in the world, the Armenian Apostolic Church, founded in the early fourth century, had no seat at the table, or why its archbishops were under arrest. The silence was so stark it felt less like an oversight and more like a plan.
Evangelical leaders praised the prime minister for his knowledge of the Bible. Jim Garlow, a former pastor from California, marveled at hearing the leader recite an entire Psalm from memory. But no one mentioned the ancient stone monasteries still standing in the lands now occupied, or the clergy held in prison.
Outside the banquet hall, the country’s Ministry of Justice had denied a request by the Switzerland-based rights group Christian Solidarity International to visit four jailed clergymen and two dozen church supporters. CSI representatives had been invited to attend the Prayer Breakfast.
At a news conference in Yerevan after the Prayer Breakfast, Joel Veldkamp, the group’s public advocacy director, said the refusal came in the form of an email citing procedures and lack of jurisdiction, sent just hours before the breakfast began. He said they had wanted to assess the physical and mental well-being of the detainees.
On the same day the breakfast concluded, the local news outlet Panorama reported that two Armenian opposition podcasters had been placed in pre-trial detention. Vazgen Saghatelyan and Narek Samsonyan, co-hosts of the “Imnemnimi” podcast, had been arrested over comments made in a Nov. 10 episode about National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan. Authorities charged them with “hooliganism,” alleging they had used offensive language and made threats.
Their lawyers called the charges baseless and politically motivated. Arsen Babayan, representing Saghatelyan, said the ruling Civil Contract party was using the case to silence critics. He referred to a video by senior MP Hayk Konjoryan, who had questioned whether harsh language should be acceptable in political debate.
‘Peace’
In sharp contrast to the mood in the country, Pashinyan set “peace” as the theme of Armenia’s first-ever Prayer Breakfast. He told an audience eager to agree that the path to peace with Azerbaijan ran from the Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., to this new one in Yerevan. It had, he suggested, “spiritual meaning.” The guests applauded again.
The Prayer Breakfast did not acknowledge the war Pashinyan was alluding to. It made little mention of Nagorno-Karabakh, a historically Armenian region, home to fourth-century sites such as the Amaras Monastery, where Saint Mesrob Mashtots, creator of the Armenian alphabet, opened the first school to teach the script and the Bible. Until recently, more than a hundred thousand ethnic Armenians lived there, governed their own institutions.
In September 2023, following a months-long blockade that had already cut off food, fuel and medicine, Azerbaijani forces launched their final military assault. Within days, almost the entire population fled Nagorno-Karabakh. Families left behind homes, schools, cemeteries and churches. Many graves have since been destroyed. Numerous churches have been defaced or sealed. Dozens of Armenians, including leaders of Artsakh, remain imprisoned in Baku.
The government in Yerevan did not intervene to stop the collapse of the enclave. By May 2023, Pashinyan had publicly stated that Armenia was ready to recognise Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, without securing protections for its Armenian population. No diplomatic effort was made to delay or prevent the attack. As Azerbaijani forces advanced, almost the entire Armenian population fled Artsakh.
Rosali Harutyanyan, a psychologist and who spoke at a panel discussion at the Prayer Breakfast, was in her university when the bombardment began. She took her students to a bunker and then ran to find her two children, she recalled, speaking to Religion Unplugged. She could not find her daughter.
“There were thousands of people on the streets, like cattle,” she said.
She finally found her 10-year-old daughter hiding in one of the shelters. They left with only their cross and a handful of miniature saints from their home. Russian peacekeepers, who had been stationed in the region under the 2020 ceasefire agreement to guarantee security for ethnic Armenians, told them they would not be protected.
After driving for 10 hours, they reached Armenia. The police looked at them as if they were from another planet, she said. It was strangers, not the government, who helped them. What she misses most is her father’s grave in Artsakh. She saw a video of Azeris destroying it. Her children now attend school in Yerevan. They sleep with their heads near the door.
Her story is one of tens of thousands.
The prime minister called this “peace,” alluding to the absence of confrontation with Azerbaijan since the takeover of Artsakh, like calling a house quiet after its owners have been forced to leave. At the Prayer Breakfast, Pashinyan boasted that he had brought peace to Armenia for the first time in its history.
This “peace” cost Armenia its Artsakh. The region declared independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, after decades of ethnic tension and violence. Though no country officially recognised it, Armenia gave consistent political, economic and military support. Most Armenians saw Artsakh as rightfully theirs, not only because it was overwhelmingly Armenian in population but also because of its deep historical ties. Its churches, cemeteries and villages are part of Armenian identity.
Speaking to Religion Unplugged, Father Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, Abbot of Artsakh’s Dadivank Monastery for decades, questioned what peace meant if it did not begin with equality among people and respect for borders. He asked what peace could mean without righteousness.
One should remove the log from one’s own eye before pointing to the speck in another’s, he said, in what appeared to be a reference to the government. He added that the Church does not concern itself with politics, but speaking about justice is often labelled as political.
Pashinyan has made peace the centrepiece of his government, not just the Prayer Breakfast. Since 2020, he has pursued agreements with Turkey and Azerbaijan. His critics say he has done so by abandoning national memory, rewriting history and weakening every institution that questions his decisions. The Armenian Apostolic Church, which stood by the people during genocide, exile and war, is now his primary target.
Church targeted
Gegham Manukyan, a member of parliament from the Armenian nationalist and socialist Dashnaktsutyun Party, also known as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and founded in 1890, said the persecution of the church began in 2018 in low-intensity forms.
As an example, he pointed to the withdrawal of state-provided security for the Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II, the church’s spiritual leader and highest-ranking cleric, that same year. He said the pressure on the church grew more severe after it criticized the government for allowing Artsakh to fall during Azerbaijan’s military assault.
In his view, the recent arrests of senior clergy and verbal attacks by government officials represent the worst level of persecution the Church has faced since Armenia’s independence.
In May 2025, after an international gathering of senior clergy in Bern, Switzerland, called for the protection of Armenian churches in Artsakh and the right to return of displaced families, Pashinyan told a cabinet meeting that churches had been “turned into junkrooms.” His wife wrote on social media that the clergy were “the country’s chief pedophiles.”
Within weeks, two senior archbishops, Bagrat Galstanyan and Mikael Ajapahyan, were arrested. According to a report by the Armenian Center for Political Rights, both cases relied on edited surveillance, distorted transcripts and years-old public remarks, reframed as threats.
The report said the tension began after the police crackdown on protesters on Oct. 12, 2024. The church’s leadership issued a public statement criticising the use of force. Within days, Archbishop Galstanyan was placed under surveillance. Investigators intercepted his private phone calls, then converted the audio into written transcripts. The report shows that the Investigative Committee added phrases that do not exist in the original recordings.
One of them was a reference to “shooting two people.” The original conversation, according to the report, was about models of military service. It contained no threats. The edited transcript, however, became the core of a criminal case against him. The report concludes that this was a deliberate attempt by the government to fabricate evidence after Bagrat challenged its authority. He was arrested on June 25.
Archbishop Mikael’s arrest was more direct. The report notes that he did not attend protests or engage in organising street demonstrations. What marked him out was his long-standing public criticism of the prime minister. Over five years, Mikael gave a series of interviews over five years, starting in 2020, arguing that Armenia needed a military coup led by senior officers. These remarks had been public for years.
In 2023, the Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement saying that the comments did not amount to incitement or a call to seize power. The legal position changed in June 2025. That month, the government escalated its confrontation with the church. Investigators reopened the same interviews and treated them as new criminal evidence.
On June 27, security forces arrived at Mikael’s residence in Gyumri before dawn, according to the report. His lawyer was not allowed to enter. At the same time, officers from the National Security Service and the police entered the Mother See, the spiritual and administrative headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church, located in Etchmiadzin, near Yerevan. They arrested him inside church grounds. That afternoon, the Prime Minister had posted insults about him on Facebook, according to the report.
Within two months, after what the report describes as a brief and closed proceeding, he was sentenced to two years in prison. The case file, according to the report, contained no evidence beyond his public interviews.
The authors of the report describe both prosecutions as politically motivated. They point to the timing of the charges, the nature of the evidence and the public involvement of the prime minister. They warn that these cases are being used to weaken the authority of the church, isolate its leadership and intimidate others who speak out.
A campaign against the Catholicos is also underway. Government officials have used public speeches, social media posts and press statements to question his moral authority and demand his resignation. Pashinyan has accused him of violating his clerical vows and acting as a political figure. Senior members of the ruling party have repeated these claims in interviews and on party channels, describing the Catholicos as an obstacle to reform and a symbol of the past.
Samvel Karapetyan, a businessman and church benefactor, was also among those arrested. His crime was to defend the church online. He was taken into custody hours after the Prime Minister threatened him on Facebook, according to the report.
Veldkamp of CSI called these measures repression carried out during a “government-hosted” Christian event.
“The fact that the Armenian authorities feel empowered to commit such a blatant act of repression even as a large delegation of international Christian guests gather in Yerevan should disturb all of us,” he said.
Inside the prayer breakfast
There have been questions about who truly organized the Prayer Breakfast. The doubts have been fuelled by the prominent platform given to Pashinyan, the silence on his government’s clash with the church, the praise directed at him, the inclusion of a session titled “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity,” and the timing, just months before the 2026 election, at a moment when he seeks legitimacy while targeting the church.
President Donald Trump’s interest in Armenia and the wider Caucasus is shaped less by local dynamics and more by larger strategic aims. His foreign policy seeks to weaken Russian influence, counter Iran and build transactional alliances.
Armenia, especially under Pashinyan’s pivot to the West, presents an opportunity. By supporting a peace process that requires concessions to Azerbaijan, Trump can claim progress in a volatile region while extending American influence along an east–west corridor that bypasses both Russia and Iran.
Evangelical networks close to Trump have also taken interest in Armenia’s Christian identity, viewing it as fertile ground for mission work and a possible foothold for Christian politics in a region surrounded by Muslim-majority states. For Trump and his allies, speaking of peace and faith is a way to build influence in new places. Countries that show loyalty to the United States are rewarded, while older alliances are set aside when they no longer serve American interests.
The Prayer Breakfast looked like a perfect platform for these American interests, where talk of faith and reconciliation masked a deeper realignment of loyalties and power.
Stepan Sargsyan, chair of the organizing committee, denied the government had a role in organizing the event, and claimed it was led by civil society organizations. Sargsyan is associated with the nonprofit My Step Foundation, which is chaired by Pashinyan’s wife.
The accusation serves two purposes. It discredits the church and flatters the West. Though the argument is persuasive to some, there is no evidence. Western governments and advocacy groups, wary of being linked to anything labelled “Russian influence,” grow more reluctant to speak out.
CSI called the accusation slander. “Don’t be distracted by innuendo,” Veldkamp said. “Focus on the facts.”
Armenia against ‘peace’
The facts appear straightforward. The Armenian Apostolic Church is being targeted by its own government, while Western religious groups lend that government moral cover. The excuse is peace, but most Armenians do not seem convinced.
A survey released by the ARAR Foundation just days before the Prayer Breakfast found that 65.1 percent of respondents did not believe a peace treaty mediated by the U.S. would deliver genuine, lasting peace. Another 69.2 percent said they considered long-term peace with Azerbaijan through negotiations to be impossible. Among those ages 18 to 28, nearly 75 percent said they did not believe peace with Azerbaijan was achievable at all.
The mood was just as firm on defence. A full 80.2 percent opposed any reduction in the army’s budget or troop numbers, even if a peace treaty were signed. When asked about Azerbaijan’s long-term goals, 48.5 percent said the complete destruction of Armenia, 17.4 percent said peaceful relations and economic cooperation, 15 percent said the weakening of Armenia’s sovereignty, and 13.7 percent said the seizure of further territory.
Many Armenians believe that Turkey and Azerbaijan have ambitions that extend beyond Nagorno-Karabakh. The memory of the Armenian Genocide, carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, remains strong, and many see Azerbaijan’s military actions as part of a pattern of hostility backed by Turkey. The public statements of Azerbaijani leaders, including references to western Armenia as historical Azerbaijani land, have deepened these fears.
In the months following the fall of Artsakh, Azerbaijani forces have made incursions into recognised Armenian territory, and border villages have been handed over without guarantees for residents. Combined with Turkey’s open military support for Azerbaijan and its strategic partnership in defence and energy, many Armenians worry that the goal is not only to isolate Armenia but to pressure or dismantle it further. The fear is not just of another war but of erasure.
But the government seems to have made its decision. It will pursue peace by abandoning Artsakh, disbanding resistance and discrediting any institution that names what has happened. It will quote scripture, host prayer breakfasts, and punish those who mourn.
Mourning remains visible. In Yerevan, the Yerablur military cemetery rises along the edge of the city. The hundreds of graves are close together, laid out in neat rows across the slope. Most belong to soldiers killed in the wars with Azerbaijan. Each grave has fresh flowers, every day. The night after the Prayer Breakfast, a young girl sat beside one from the early 1990s. She looked no older than 20. Her head was bowed. She did not move for an hour.
One can look away or pretend not to see. But some things cannot be covered over by foreign guests or public speeches. The Armenian people know who defended them. They know what Artsakh meant. They know who remained silent. And they know who is still in prison.
The Prayer Breakfast ended with polite applause and group photos. The foreign delegates boarded their flights. The government issued statements about religious harmony. The priests stayed in jail. The graves stayed tended.
And the church stayed standing. Stripped of influence, but still bearing witness.
Vishal Arora is an independent journalist based in New Delhi, India, who covers Asia and beyond. He serves as editor of @Newsreel_Asia and is a board member of The Media Project. He’s written for many outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Diplomat and The Caravan.
