How the Vatican helped legitimize the autocracy in Azerbaijan

February 22, 2020, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City. The day before the first Italian case of Covid-19 was diagnosed at the hospital of Codogno, in the province of Lodi. The Holy See seems to be thinking of something else. An official visit is happening: the autocrat of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, is being received by Pope Bergoglio, the Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and the Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher. Together with the Azerbaijani president, who inherited the title from his father Heydar, there is his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, who also holds the post of vice president of the Caucasian Republic – a case that is unique in the world.

Anything but marginal in her country’s politics, Aliyeva is in Vatican City to receive the highest honor awarded to lay people by the Holy See: the Grand Cross of the Order Piano. The title, given to Dames and Knights, is proposed by diocesan bishops as a sign of appreciation and gratitude for services to the Church or to society, and it’s reserved for heads of state, ministers, ambassadors, and crowned heads. In Italy, several presidents of the Republic received it and, in less merciful times, also fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano.

The Holy See statement, which summarizes the dialogue between the Alyievs and the Vatican high hierarchies, refers to «the importance of intercultural and interreligious dialogue in favor of peaceful coexistence among different religious and ethnic groups».

This is a theme that the Azerbaijani regime – often considered a place for peaceful coexistence among people with different beliefs – has considered of great importance since its independence from the USSR in 1991. However, this position conceals an aggressive approach toward neighboring Armenia and, from an internal point of view, little respect for human rights and freedom of information.

Calls on the international community to stop Azerbaijan

Only a few months after the Vatican visit, in September 2020, the second (or third, including the four-day conflict of 2016) Nagorno-Karabakh war broke out in the Armenian-majority Azerbaijani region. For the European Parliament, the conflict marked the beginning of an «ethnic cleansing». A year later, hoping to gain international recognition of the ongoing atrocities, Armenia opened a case for violations of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the main UN legal body to settle disputes between states.

The case is still pending and the next hearings, after the Armenian prosecution and Azerbaijani defense exhibits, are expected in April.

However, the ICJ has already ruled: on December 7, 2021, it issued an order, calling Azerbaijan to respect war prisoners’ human rights after the 2020 conflict, to take appropriate measures to prevent an escalation of racial violence, to implement countermeasures to defend Armenia’s artistic and cultural heritage.

These requests were disputed by Azerbaijan in its reply. In October 2022, the Court ruled that the demands had not yet been met, and in February 2023, it approved a second demand by Armenia, asking Azerbaijan to take «appropriate measures to ensure the passage of people, vehicles and cargo from the Lachin corridor».

This transit, after the 2020 war, was the only route connecting Karabakh to Armenia. Its disruption led first to a humanitarian crisis and then, in September 2023, to the final victory of the Azeris. Baku’s army thus defeated the Armenian forces that administered the region, causing over 100,000 Armenian refugees.

While the exodus was still ongoing, the Pope prayed for the inhabitants of Karabakh, hoping «that talks between the parties, with the support of the international community, will foster a lasting agreement that will end the humanitarian crisis». Even in 2020, the Church had proved unable to go beyond generic appeals «to all the parties involved and to the international community» to «lay down arms».

After the defeat, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, for the second time since 2020, was called a «traitor» by his opponents, who accused him of failing to defend the Armenians in Karabakh. A month later, on October 24, 2023, Pashinyan, defeated and disputed,  received from Apostolic Nuncio Jose Avelino Bettencourt the award given three years earlier to Aliyeva, vice president of Azerbaijan.

Not so ecumenical, however, is the spirit with which the Holy See honored the leaders of each of the two countries. While Aliyeva was received by top Vatican officials, Pashinyan was honored by an apostolic nuncio who is no longer on mission in the region today. In the Caucasus, Vatican diplomacy followed other advices and helped consolidate the power of the Aliyev family, despite human rights violations in Karabakh.

The narrative of the policy followed by the Vatican in the region and its implications for peace was reconstructed by IrpiMedia by cross-referencing information provided by six sources. These are people who are familiar with the Holy See diplomacy in various roles but could not speak to journalists. That is why we granted them anonymity.

The architects of friendship with Baku

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, honorary president  of the Pontifical Council for Culture and chairman of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, is the highest Vatican official who has made most efforts to open a dialogue with Azerbaijan, a Muslim-majority country.

Awarded in 2013 by the Azerbaijani authorities with the Order of Friendship – a high honor offered for a «special contribution to the development of friendship, economic and cultural relations between Azerbaijan and a foreign state» – Ravasi is in fact committed to dialogue with other religions, as well as with science and the secular world, looking with interest and sympathy to the Islamic world. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Highly educated and polyglot, ambitious and power-loving,

Cardinal Gugerotti has known the Aliyev family since 2002, when the progenitor Heydar, in power since 1969, was still alive. In Vatican circles Gugerotti was known as «Don Stambecco» («Father Ibex») because of his precocious as well as unbridled careerism, as revealed in the successful 1999 book Via col vento in Vaticano by some prelates who remained anonymous.

In the early 2000s, Gugerotti met with Azerbaijani authorities as nuncio for the South Caucasus, a position he assumed in 2001. Before then, this nunciature for the Holy See included only Georgia and Armenia. Those were the years when Russia was guaranteeing a cease-fire in the region, after Armenia had defeated Azerbaijan in the first conflict. The ethnic hatred that is still fuel of the conflict was beginning to settle, but Nuncio Gugerotti called Azerbaijan a «country [that] is a symbol of peaceful coexistence between people of different religions».

Ten years after he began his mission as apostolic nuncio in 2011, Gugerotti signed the historic agreement that, for the first time, regulates relations between Baku and the Catholic Church. At the time of ratification – recalls a 2019 book produced by the Moral Values Promotion Foundation from Baku, entitled Christianity in Azerbaijan – Gugerotti «expressed gratitude to the [Azeri] government for creating the conditions that made possible [the agreement], emphasizing that our country always remained committed to the principles of tolerance, and noting that the agreement was the first document of its kind, because the Vatican had never signed such an agreement with any state before».

«Azerbaijan», Gugerotti’s is quoted saying in the book, «has proved its tolerance once again. Now the whole world has witnessed it. I am sure that this document will receive a positive response in the international world and will be remembered as a great historical event. The reaction of the press from the first day gives us reason to say that. On behalf of the Holy Throne and Crown, I extend my deep thanks for all this to President Ilham Aliyev and the government of Azerbaijan».

After his Caucasian experience ended in 2011, the  prelate born in Verona continued to work in former Soviet republics. He served as apostolic nuncio first to Belarus and then to Ukraine. He met for the Vatican with Moscow Patriarch Kirill and Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Thanks to Pope Francis, he was made cardinal, then prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, and then the Pope’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine along with Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi.

He was supposed to meet on behalf of the Holy See with Vladimir Putin in Moscow last year, when the Vatican was set to negotiate a peace between Russia and Ukraine. The meeting, however, never took place. Eventually, thanks again to the Argentinian Pope, he was appointed to the Council of the Vatican Secretariat of State in February.

The proximity to Moscow has been a key to his career. In 2013, indeed, he received the Movses Khorenatsi Medal – Armenia’s highest honor – from then-President Serzh Sargsyan for his important contribution to Armenian studies, but also for the effort to strengthen relations between Yerevan and the Holy See. Sargsyan, forced to resign in 2018 due to demonstrations against corruption and his excessive closeness to Putin, still in 2023 called Moscow “Armenia’s best ally”.

Although as apostolic nuncio to Britain he declared that «we are all Ukrainians» in March 2022, Cardinal Gugerotti has been very lenient toward Russia’s stances. He called the annexation of Crimea, the cause of the first sanctions against Russia established in 2014, a «handover». He defined the West’s attitude toward the Russians «arrogance» and spoke of «squabbles» he had with Washington diplomacy. In 2023, he was supposed to participate in the Holy See’s diplomatic mission to achieve peace between Russia and Ukraine, only to end up at the center of heavy criticism from Kyiv itself as being considered too close to Moscow.

A request for comment sent by IrpiMedia to the cardinal’s secretariat regarding the tragic developments in Karabakh went unanswered, as did a request for clarification with respect to Monsignor Gugerotti’s role in the birth and development of the relationship between the Holy See and the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Azerbaijan’s economic-diplomatic arm.

Aliyev Foundation’s restorations

Since 2009, the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, headed by  Mehriban Aliyeva, has funded various activities in the Vatican: restoration projects, exhibitions and concerts. A request from IrpiMedia to the Holy See to state how much the funding allocated by the Aliyev Foundation amounts to remained unanswered, as well as to make explicit what projects are still ongoing and those planned for the future.

The list of regime-funded restorations that IrpiMedia has compiled through open sources includes Roman catacombs (those of Saints Marcellinus and Peter on the Via Casilina, but also those of Commodilla), the Vatican Museums (the restoration of the statue of Zeus in the Pio Clementino Museum, which is part of the Museums, as well as the ancient cabinets of the Sistine Hall) the Vatican Apostolic Library (more than 3.000 thousand books and 75 manuscripts), churches in France (Notre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg, the church of Saint Paterne, and another located in Reveillon) and in Azerbaijan (such as the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Baku, whose  construction was financed in large part by the regime, reported Askanews; same for its restoration and renovation completed in 2021), and even St. Peter’s Basilica (in particular, the bas-relief depicting the encounter between Pope Leo I and Attila King of the Huns).

The Holy See did not respond to our request for clarification as to whether the list is exhaustive or not.

Donations allocated for the restoration of these monuments amount to at least 640.000 euros, according to data found online. In 2020, however, Emin Rustamov, then president of the Azerbaijan Italian Youth Association in Rome and now adviser to the chairman of the Baku State Commission for Work with Diaspora, tweeted that «Azerbaijan has donated more than 1 million euros for the restoration of several historical monuments and churches in the Vatican». Accompanying hashtag: #NonèGuerraDiReligione (i.e., «It’s not a religious war»), a topic that has repeatedly came out in the Western public debate about the war between the two former Soviet republics.

Rustamov included the link to the 2011 agreement facilitated by Gugerotti between the Vatican and Azerbaijan. Contacted by email, Rustamov did not respond to questions regarding the source of the estimate he published.

The ouster of the Armenian genocide scholar

The Pontifical Oriental Institute (PIO) is where, in Rome, the Eastern Catholic Church is studied. It has been operating since 1917 and has two faculties: Eastern Ecclesiastical Sciences and Eastern Canon Law. Since 2019 it has been cooperating with the Azerbaijan International Development Agency (AIDA), the Azerbaijani cooperation agency. The agreement signed between the Institute and Aida is one of the tools, as much as the restorations funded by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, through which the relationship between the two countries has been strengthened.

On February 19, 2024, one of its professors, Belgian Jesuit Georges-Henri Ruyssen, was kicked out of the institute and expelled from the Society of Jesus.

«The notice to the academic community of the PIO» wrote the website La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, an online Catholic newspaper in which also contributes Luca Volontè, a former member of the European Parliament convicted of international corruption in the first instance for receiving money from Azerbaijan to his personal foundation (the crime was later prescribed in 2022).

The notice does not state the reasons for Ruyssen’s departure, but specifies, among other things, that Ruyssen «will no longer be the Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Canon Law», that he «will spend a period of two years outside of Rome to take care of his health», and that he will «leave the Institute and the Jesuit residence of the PIO».According to the Catholic newspaper, there is a climate of «clean-ups» inside the Jesuits. One detail reported by La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana: he would be one of the consultants – papal-appointed advisers at the request of the cardinal prefect – of the Dicastery headed by Cardinal Gugerotti who, as a result, had wanted him among his collaborators.

After the ouster of the prestigious scholar, Rector David Nazar – in March 2024 – will receive a «promotion» under the new configuration of the Pontifical Gregorian University, of which he will be designated Administrative Director.

Ruyssen, according to three different sources consulted by IrpiMedia, was allegedly kicked out after his protest against a case of denialism of the Armenian genocide that occurred within the Institute where he taught. The scholar takes the issue to heart as author of more than a decade of archival investigations, culminating in a multi-volume work that is of fundamental importance to  study  the Armenian genocide and its international recognition.

In 2021, he also served as editor of the proceedings of a conference entitled Abuse in the Church, where he dealt with all forms of abuse – sexual, spiritual, and of power – within church hierarchies.

On the issue of the Armenian genocide, the Holy See has had more transparent attitudes in the past, such as when, on the occasion of the centenary, Pope Francis publicly used the term, breaking a long-standing tradition of reticence and hesitation. An act of courage, that of the Pope, which took place in correspondence with the apostolic trip to Armenia, reportedly editing at the last moment a speech that had been prepared for him where – two sources told us – the word genocide was missing. After that statement, Turkey briefly recalled its ambassador to the Holy See.

Dialogue with everyone, but with what results?

It is evident, as in the case of the conflict in Ukraine, the Holy See’s attempt to accredit itself as a diplomatic channel. The Vatican’s opening to Azerbaijan and Russia, therefore, should be framed in the context of Ostpolitik – the normalization of relations with the «Eastern bloc» of today’s autocracies – of the current pontiff. A strategy that looks, first and foremost, to Russia and China, and culminated in the 2016 Cuba meeting, with the historic joint statement between the Pope and Moscow Patriarch Kirill. Where there is no shortage of passages revealing a convergence of values and intentions that seems to go beyond mere ecumenical dialogue.

It’s written, for example, in point 20 of the joint statement: «The family is based on marriage, an act of freely given and faithful love between a man and a woman. […] We regret that other forms of cohabitation have been placed on the same level as this union, while the concept, consecrated in the biblical tradition, of paternity and maternity as the distinct vocation of man and woman in marriage is being banished from the public conscience».

The project to unify the dates of Easter between Catholics and Orthodox and, in the future, the push for a unity of Christians under the Vatican umbrella, later undermined by the war, were some of the pillars of Bergoglio’s work. Thereafter, the diplomatic effort (with Zuppi’s aforementioned mission) was aimed at reviving the Church’s image, reaffirming its hegemony in Christianity and its role as a diplomatic power.

This, inevitably, produced friction and bitterness with both Ukraine and Armenia, which perceived this opening to dialogue with two aggressor countries as a sign of hostility. «We talk to everyone», Cardinal Gugerotti declared in September 2023 – while the expulsion of the Armenian population of Karabakh was being accomplished – referring to a Vatican diplomatic initiative in the Caucasus, the fruits of which, however, have yet to be seen.

As much in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia as in the one between Russia and Ukraine, therefore, the risk is that this operation has had the effect, perhaps unintended, of strengthening the hegemonic role of the two autocracies, and that this opening – much welcomed by Moscow and Baku – may contribute to a diplomatic normalization that would put in the background, or erase,  crimes and aggressions committed by those same autocracies.