A trial against the head of the Armenian Church, Garegin II, and six bishops is beginning in Armenia. They are accused of failing to comply with a court ruling, an offense punishable by up to two years in prison.

This is reported by DW.

The legal basis for the trial is a dispute over the defrocking of one of the archbishops. Meanwhile, observers note that the roots of the proceedings lie in the open confrontation between the secular and religious authorities that began in 2020 after Armenia’s defeat in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Criminal proceedings were initiated on charges of obstructing the enforcement of a court ruling concerning former clergyman Arman Saroyan. As one of the clergymen who publicly supported the campaign initiated by Armenia’s prime minister against the incumbent Catholicos, he was removed from his position as head of one of the dioceses. A secular court ruled in favor of the disgraced bishop and ordered that he be reinstated. However, the Mother See of Holy Ejmiatsin, the spiritual center of the Armenians, categorically refused to comply, stating that such matters fall exclusively within the realm of canon law and that the state’s actions constitute a gross interference in the internal autonomy of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC). Afterward, by a decision of the Supreme Spiritual Council, the bishop was stripped entirely of his ecclesiastical rank.

The trial has become the culmination of a protracted crisis in relations between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the religious authorities. The rift emerged as early as after the 44-day war of 2020, when Catholicos Garegin II openly called on the head of government to resign, thereby effectively joining similar demands from the political opposition.

Tensions escalated in 2024 amid protests against the delimitation of the border with Azerbaijan. The movement, led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, received the patriarch’s blessing.

The authorities accuse the Church leadership of turning into an “institution of war propaganda”, as priests continue to pray for Nagorno-Karabakh, running counter to Yerevan’s policy of signing a peace treaty with Baku and recognizing as part of Azerbaijan a region that until recently was populated by Armenians and controlled by them.