The parliament’s statutes entitle the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church to delivering such an address along with the president of the republic. Garegin did not exercise that right due to a lack of formal invitation from the pro-government majority in the National Assembly. The snub reflected Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s yearlong campaign to depose him denounced by the Armenian opposition as illegal.
Lawmakers representing the opposition Strong Armenia and Hayastan alliances decried Garegin’s absence when the parliament elected on June 7 began its opening session on Sunday morning.
“Where is the Catholicos?” shouted some of them, prompting stern warnings from a pro-government colleague chairing the session.
The entire parliamentary groups of both alliances visited Garegin at his Echmiadzin headquarters late in the evening to show solidarity with him.
“In the context of this government’s anti-national campaign, when for the first time in the history of our state, His Holiness’ message, prayer, and wishes were not heard at the inaugural session of the National Assembly, we were obliged to correct what happened,” Hayastan’s parliamentary leader, Anna Grigorian, said at the meeting.
Opposition deputies attend the opening session of the National Assembly, Yerevan, August 2, 2026.
According to a statement released by the church’s Mother See, Garegin “conveyed his greetings and blessings to the deputies” and regretted the fact he was not unable to address them and the other lawmakers on the parliament floor “for known reasons.” He also deplored the “concerning situation” in Armenia and “illegal, unconstitutional steps taken against the Armenian Church.”
“Such unacceptable phenomena undermine the foundations of national unity, Diaspora-Armenia relations, disrupt the atmosphere of mutual respect and trust in society, the strengthening of democracy and legality, and the supremacy of justice and truth,” the statement quoted him as saying.
Garegin as well as six archbishops and bishops will go on trial on Friday on charges rejected by them, opposition leaders and other critics of Pashinian as politically motivated. The charges stem from his January 27 decision to defrock a pro-government bishop involved in Pashinian’s controversial campaign. Lawyers representing the Mother See maintain that Armenian courts law-enforcement agencies have no jurisdiction over internal church affairs.
Garegin is the first Catholicos prosecuted in Armenia’s post-Soviet history. Even Soviet authorities had never formally prosecuted his predecessors.
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. Three Armenian archbishops and one bishop were arrested in the following months on different charges strongly denied by them. They all were moved to house arrest this year.
