Court Sets Date for Catholicos Karakin II’s Hearing

A hearing for the criminal case against Catholicos Karekin II has been set for August 7, in Etchmiadzin, his attorney Ara Zohrabyan announced on Thursday.

The attorney explained that the criminal case against the Catholicos, as well as six bishops and archbishops, has been transferred to the general court of first instance of Armenia’s Armavir Province.

The accusations leveled against Karekin II stem from his January 27 decision to defrock a bishop involved in Pashinyan’s controversial campaign to oust the Catholicos. The bishop, Gevorg Saroyan, was dismissed earlier in January as head of the church’s Masyatsotn Diocese encompassing parts of Armenia’s southern Ararat province.

With Pashinyan’s encouragement, Saroyan refused to obey the decision and went on to challenge it in court. In an unprecedented injunction, a district court ruled on January 16 that Saroyan must be reinstated pending its verdict on the lawsuit. Lawyers representing the church maintain that Armenian courts have no jurisdiction over internal church affairs.

Saroyan’s defrocking was recommended by the church’s Supreme Spiritual Council. Six bishops sitting on the council were also charged with obstructing the execution of the court order. They will stand trial with Karekin II.

The Office of the Prosecutor-General said on Tuesday that it has finally sent the criminal case to a court of first instance in the town of Armavir. The case was swiftly assigned to one of its judges, Hakob Manukyan.

This is the first instance since Armenia’s independence in 1991 that criminal charges have been brought against the Catholicos of All Armenians.

So deep is the schism between the church and state bodies, that also for the first since Armenia’s independence that Catholicos will not attend and bless the first session of parliament, which will convene next week. Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, which holds a majority in parliament, has not extended an invitation to the pontiff.

By Armenian law, only the president and the Catholicos may address parliament on the first day of its inauguration as non-lawmakers.

This is the second case in the last hundred years when the Armenian state authorities have made the Catholicos of All Armenians a target of criminal or violent pressure.

The other Catholicos of All Armenians who has been targeted by the state was Catholicos Khoren I, who led the church during nascent years of the Soviet Union and it anti-religious dogma. On April 6, 1938, Soviet Security agents strangled Khoren I to death.

The trial is the latest in steps taken by the Pashinyan administration against the Armenian Church and the Catholicos, dating back to 2018, when the diplomatic passports of bishops were canceled. In 2020, Catholicos Karekin II’s state security detail was terminated. That was the same year that the “History of the Armenian Church” was eliminated from public school curriculum. The state campaign against the church continued in 2024 when spiritual services at penitentiaries were terminated, culminating in a similar ban of the church in the Armed Forces the following year.

Last June, Pashinyan called for Karekin II’s resignation and vowed to depose him by creating a “reform” body for the Church. Through regular Facebook Live posts, Pashinyan, using vile language and accusations, set the tone for instructing state security forces to raid the Echmiadzin compound and arrests high-level clerics.