Vatican Conference on ‘Christianity in Azerbaijan’ Condemned by Watchdog

The Artsakh Monument Watch issued an alert about a conference, titled “Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity,” currently underway at the Pontifical Gregorian University of the Holy See in the Vatican.

The conference is being attended by experts and researchers from various countries, including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Russia, Poland, Italy, Georgia, Germany, France, Canada, the United States, and Lithuania, according to the Artsakh Monument Watch.

In a post on Facebook, the watchdog group reported that “no organization of Armenian Studies was aware of this conference.”

The event has been organized with the aim of “erasing the history, culture, and presence of Armenians in the territory of Azerbaijan. As a result, monuments that are clearly Armenian—bearing hundreds of Armenian inscriptions—are being presented as Caucasian Albanian,” said the statement.

“We are also perplexed by the participation of some well-known scholars in the field, who are fully aware that no Armenian researchers are taking part in this conference and that not a single word is being said about Armenians,” said the Artsakh Monument Watch, while emphasizing their concern about the preservation of Armenian cultural heritage to the international community for allowing Armenian “history, and culture to be so obscured and ignored.”