Vance visit greenlights escalation of Pashinyan’s war against Armenian Apostolic Church

2026-02-18 - 16:54

What did the Catholicos say to trigger rage in Ankara and Baku? Only days after U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan escalated his assault against the Armenian Apostolic Church. He has had the Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II, indicted for “obstructing justice.” While in Yerevan, Vance as a self-described “devout Christian” endorsed Pashinyan’s candidacy for re-election as Prime Minister, chose not to visit the Primate at the Holy Mother See of Etchmiadzin and deleted his Twitter reference to the Genocide of Armenian Christians. The indictment prevents the Catholicos from leaving Armenia to attend a global meeting of the bishops of the Armenian Apostolic Church set to begin on Tuesday in St. Pölten, Austria. Six bishops in Armenia have already been similarly charged for the same reason. Four other bishops have been imprisoned on Pashinyan’s orders. Since mid-2025, Pashinyan has sought to gain control of the national church with a surge of indictments, arrests and incarceration of hierarchs and others loyal to the Catholicos. This wave of anti-Church persecution incorporates methods used by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s. Among them was financial and political support for a so-called “Free Church” (Azat Yekeghetsi) reform movement made up of a collection of disaffected clergy to undermine the authority of the Catholicos. The wave broke immediately following the Catholicos’s address last May at a World Council of Churches sponsored conference on religious freedom and cultural heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Primate crossed Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s red lines by stating: “In the 21st century — an era that should have been marked by the triumph of peace, harmony and justice in the lives of nations and states — we instead witness genocidal acts and ethnic cleansing carried out under the banners of war, hatred and hostility. We are witnessing condemnable violations of religious freedom and fundamental human rights. Our own people have suffered such calamities, as Azerbaijan, with military support from Turkey, waged aggression and committed atrocities against Artsakh. Since the launch of the 44-day war in 2020, followed by large-scale military operations in 2023, Artsakh has been entirely occupied and forcibly depopulated of its Armenian population. Azerbaijan has also seized strategically vital border territories of the Republic of Armenia and continues to impose new demands in the peace negotiations. It is currently holding hostage the political leaders of Artsakh, along with civilians and prisoners of war, subjecting them to show trials in blatant violation of international legal standards. These unlawful and degrading acts are clearly motivated by ethnic hatred and anti-Armenian sentiment. They are the very reasons for Azerbaijan’s continued assaults on the Armenian spiritual and cultural heritage and its sacred historical sites.” Turkey and Azerbaijan have identified the Catholicos and the national Church as an “obstacle to peace” and have demanded the Primate’s removal as one of their conditions for peaceful relations with Armenia. By persecuting the Armenian Apostolic Church, the pro-Turkish Pashinyan is striving to meet their demands and hasten the signing of a peace treaty. He has Washington’s backing. Vance’s endorsement for Pashinyan’s re-election bid and Trump’s branding of Pashinyan and Aliyev as “great leaders” are public signals of American acceptance, if not approval, of the current Erdogan-Aliyev inspired assault against the Church to which over 90% of Armenians belong. The “Armenia Question” has vexed Western statesmen, on and off, for nearly 150 years. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have attempted to solve it by engineering an economic and political integration of Christian Armenia into the Erdogan-led Turkish-Azerbaijani condominium. The Armenian Apostolic Church has been, for centuries, the most solid institutional bastion of Christian Armenia, withstanding repeated waves of violent persecution. The faithfulness of the Catholicos and his Church to that tradition is perceived by officials in Washington, Ankara and Baku as hindering their geopolitical project. *** This piece