Three senior clerics have been removed from the Supreme Spiritual Council following actions deemed incompatible with their responsibilities within the Armenian Church.
Archbishop Abraham Mkrtchyan, Primate of the Diocese of Vayots Dzor; Archbishop Vazgen Mirzakhanyan, Primate of the Armenian Diocese of the Baltic States; and Bishop Gevorg Saroyan, Primate of the Diocese of Masyatsotn were dismissed after a sequence of political engagement and public confrontation with the Church.
Their removal followed a meeting with Nikol Pashinyan, involvement in calling for a public protest, public calls for the resignation of Catholicos Karekin II, and open alignment with those demands. The Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin assessed these actions as a clear politicization of the clergy and a direct challenge to the Church’s unity and moral foundations.
This decision comes amid open and escalating attacks by the current government against the Armenian Church. Several high-ranking members of the clergy are now political prisoners, detained as part of a broader campaign of pressure on the Church. In this context, the public political alignment of primates was not treated as dissent, but as dissidence aligned with state power.
Participation in street protests and political pressure campaigns is incompatible with membership in the Church’s highest spiritual governing body.
The removed members of the Supreme Spiritual Council will be replaced by:
– Bishop Makar Hakobyan, Current Primate of the Diocese of Syunik
– Bishop Kirakos Davtyan, Current Primate of the Diocese of the Armenians of Georgia
– Bishop Vahan Hovhannisyan, Current Director of the “Garegin I” Educational Center of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin
The announcement was made today in Etchmiadzin by Father Yesayi Artenyan, Director of the Information System of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, during a briefing with journalists.
