Pashinyan Proposes ‘Coordinating Council’ to Ostensibly Oversee Catholicos Elections
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Tuesday continued his almost two-week-long smear campaign against the Armenian Church and its supreme leader, Catholicos Karekin II, by proposing the creation of a “coordinating Council” to oversee the election of a new pontiff—a step that is beyond the realm of his constitutional responsibilities.
He posted the proposal on Facebook as part of an ongoing thread of unverified accusations and insults, which the Supreme Spiritual Council of the Holy See of Etchmiadzin condemned and called an affront to the Armenian Apostolic Church.
In a statement issued last week in response to Pashinyan’s rants, the Supreme Spiritual Council pointed out that the prime minister’s statements violate the division of church from the state enshrined in the Armenian Constitution.
In making his proposal for the formation of a coordinating council, Pashinyan said that decisive steps are needed to “liberate” the Holy See of Holy Etchmiadzin and initiate a “modernization process.”
“The coordinating group may include both men and women, laypeople and clergy,” Pashinyan noted, adding that in case of the clergy it is essential not to have violated their vow of celibacy.
Pashinyan stated that he would personally select the first 10 members of the council. The group will later decide on its own expansion mechanisms and internal structure.
The prime minister also outlined several—vague and absurd—prerequisites for membership in the coordinating council, including candidates must prove that they pray every day and have “at least once, have read the Bible from beginning to end.”
Other prerequisites that a potential candidate must prove is whether they “with all their soul, believe in our Lord, Jesus Christ,” and have observed Lent in the last five years. They also have to pledge whether they are in favor of the so-called “modernization” of the Church and hold the firm belief that such an effort “stems from the interests of the Armenian Apostolic Church, our people, and our state, and is in keeping with the sacred tradition of our ancestors.”
“I understand that most of the aforementioned criteria for membership in the Coordination Group cannot be objectively verified, but with God’s help, and through contacts and conversations, it is possible to find out, it is possible to see with the eyes of the soul,” Pashinyan wrote in his Facebook post.
Etchmiadzin officials seemed unmoved and unfazed from their earlier position as expressed in the Supreme Spiritual Council’s statement last week.
“We are not in a panic. We have no worries,” said Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan, the Chancellor of the Holy See of Etchmiadzin.
“It is disconcerting that that such a situation has been created, but there is no panic, no atmosphere of fear, God is with us all,” Archbishop Khachatryan added, referring to Pashinyan’s campaign to discredit the church at a time
