Pashinyan demands Catholicos Karekin II resign

By Alexander Pracht

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called for the resignation of Catholicos Karekin II on Sunday, claiming that the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church had violated his celibacy vow and fathered a child. In a strongly worded post on his social media accounts, Pashinyan promised to provide evidence.

“Karekin II has broken the celibacy oath he voluntarily undertook and has a child,” Pashinyan wrote. “This is a fact. If he tries to deny it, I will prove it in the appropriate format.”

Pashinyan cited the canons of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which require bishops and the Catholicos to be celibate, arguing that Karekin II was never eligible for his position. He said the Church must elect a new Catholicos whose personal integrity would be confirmed prior to election.

“As a faithful follower of the Armenian Apostolic Church, I state that the Church must have a newly elected Catholicos,” he said. “We have returned the government to the people.

Now we must also return the church to the people.”

The post marks the most direct and personal attack on the Catholicos since tensions between the prime minister and the Church flared late last month. Speaking during a government session, Pashinyan accused senior clergy of corruption and moral hypocrisy in a profanity-laced tirade. He and his wife, Anna Hakobyan, continued the attack online the next day, specifically accusing Bishop Hovnan Hakobyan of the Gougark Diocese of breaking celibacy vows and calling for his defrocking.

Responding to the allegations, the Supreme Spiritual Council accused the Prime Minister of launching a politically motivated campaign against the Church at a meeting last Monday. In a formal declaration, Church leaders said Pashinyan had crossed legal and moral lines and warned that his language risked undermining national unity.

“The Prime Minister has once again launched an offensive against the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church, employing language and accusations that are unbecoming of a public official,” the statement said. “This anti-Church stance is clearly driven by political motives.”

Karekin II himself has not responded publicly to Pashinyan’s latest accusations. The Prime Minister did not offer evidence for his claim but said he would if challenged.

The confrontation is the latest chapter in a long-running feud between the post-2020 Armenian government and the Church, which has criticized Pashinyan’s handling of the 2020 Karabakh war and its aftermath. Last spring, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan led a protest movement calling for Pashinyan’s resignation. The Catholicos implicitly supported his aspirations by relieving him of his diocesan duties while allowing him to retain his clerical rank.

This triggered government officials to question the Church’s tax privileges and to call for oversight mechanisms.

Last week, Pashinyan proposed background checks for future Catholicos candidates, further fueling tensions. Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan had earlier suggested conditioning tax exemptions on stricter financial transparency from the Church.

This new wave of the feud follows Catholicos Karekin II’s participation in an Armenian heritage conference in Bern, Switzerland, where he condemned Azerbaijan for the 2023 ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh and voiced support for the right of return of Armenians to the region. His remarks appeared to diverge from the Armenian government’s current approach to relations with Azerbaijan, which emphasizes cautious diplomacy and avoids statements that might provoke backlash, in an effort to preserve momentum in the normalization process.

In an interview with CivilNet, commentator and journalist Karpis Pashoyan said that the government mistakenly treats the Church as a political opponent. While acknowledging the Church’s internal issues, he warned against blurring the lines between Church and state.

“This is a crisis of content,” Pashoyan said. “Politics has turned into emotion, not reason.”

Despite these tensions, the Armenian Apostolic Church remains the most trusted institution in the country, according to recent Caucasus Barometer polling. The Church, for its part, has called for de-escalation and urged the government to abandon what it calls “artificial agendas” that could harm both the nation and the diaspora.