The annual addresses by Garegin and his two predecessors, followed by similar speeches delivered by the incumbent president or prime minister of the republic, had been aired shortly before midnight on December 31 ever since 1990. Public Television broke with this post-Soviet tradition on December 31, 2023 amid Pashinian’s heightened tensions with the supreme head of the church. The church’s Echmiadzin-based Mother See rejected its last-minute offer to air the pontifical message during an earlier news program.
The press office of the Mother See said the television management decided to schedule the message for 9:55 p.m. local time without consulting with it.
“The television company continues to bypass the decades-old tradition of broadcasting the New Year’s message of the Catholicos of All Armenians, ignoring the position of the Mother See and the demands and expectations of the Armenian Church faithful in Armenia and around the world,” it said in a statement.
In these circumstances, it said, the Mother See “does not consider it appropriate to broadcast the message on Public Television.” It will be aired by other broadcasters “at the time set by tradition in previous years,” added the statement.
Contacted by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, the TV channel run by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s loyalists argued that in the absence of any legal requirements Armenian broadcasters are free to decide the time and sequence of New Year addresses. But it did not say why it decided not to stick to the tradition and whether that is connected with tensions between the government and the church.
The channel’s December 2023 move drew strong condemnation from many opposition and public figures. They claimed that it was ordered by Pashinian.
Catholicos Garegin II and other clergymen break through a police cordon at the Sardarapat memorial, May 28, 2024.
Pashinian’s relationship with the ancient church, to which the vast majority of Armenians belong, has increasingly deteriorated in recent years and especially since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Garegin and other senior clergymen joined the Armenian opposition in calling for Pashinian’s resignation following Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war. The premier has accused them of meddling in politics.
One of the clergymen, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian, led anti-government protests in May and June this year sparked by Pashinian’s controversial territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. The church’s Supreme Spiritual Council voiced support for Galstanian and his supporters on May 7 as they marched from the northern Tavush province to Yerevan to demand Pashinian’s resignation. Pashinian denounced the church and threatened to impose new taxes on it.
Later in May, police tried to physically stop Garegin from visiting the Sardarapat war memorial just before a delayed Pashinian-led ceremony was held there to mark a key national holiday. The Catholicos and other clerics accompanying him had to break through police cordons to lay flowers there.
Despite the unprecedented tensions, Pashinian and members of his political team accepted Garegin’s invitation to attend on September 29 a Mass held at the newly renovated Mother Cathedral of Echmiadzin. The church indicated afterwards that Garegin has not changed his critical attitude towards the country’s political leadership.
