“Faith was stolen from us”: how the Armenian Apostolic Church was on the verge of a split
Posted on September. 15. 2019
Grigor Atanesyan, Olga Ivshina BBC, Moscow-Izhevsk-Yerevan
Smoldering years of internal conflict in the near future could develop into a large-scale crisis in one of the oldest Christian churches. The Russian BBC service found out that the accumulated claims of secular diasporas to hierarchs coincided with the opposition movement within the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC), and dissatisfied leaders of secular communities from Russia have been talking with rebellious clergy in Armenia for several months.
In Siberia, the Volga region and in the Urals, the leaders of Armenian public organizations accuse the Russian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of raiding, greed, an authoritarian style of government and attempts to quarrel the diaspora. The church says that these charges are illiteracy and vanity.
At the same time, part of the clergy of the AAC openly believes that the actions of the brother of the Archbishop of Russia Yezras – the Catholicos and Patriarch of all Armenians Garegin II ARTYOM GEODAKYAN / TASSIM/ ABGBCE M – can lead to the violation of church canons and heresies.
If these two opposition movements unite, this could lead to the creation of a parallel network of parishes and a virtual split.
However, the church either does not notice the conflict or tries to ignore it. The press service of Bishop Ezras answered all questions of the BBC with three proposals, which boiled down to the fact that “there are no problems in the parish life of the Russian and New Nakhichevan diocese of the AAC.”
“Either the church, or the outlet”
“This is my Lianochka. For five years we couldn’t baptize her, can you imagine? Seventeen times they called the diocese, asked the priest to send it. Nobody came,” says Arsen Mosoyan, showing photos of his daughter on the phone.
Desperate to wait for the AAC priest from Moscow, Izhevsk Armenians invited a monk from Armenia. So they found themselves in the center of the conflict, which for years has been brewing inside the Armenian Church, but has only spilled out now.
Arsen Mosoyan has been living in Izhevsk for 26 years. Having served in the Pskov Airborne Division, he returned to Udmurtia and began the construction business. When the Armenian community decided to build a temple in Izhevsk, he helped with everything he could. After work, he came with friends to a future church, laid the foundation, erected walls, and himself poured concrete.
The temple was built with money from members of the Armenian Public Organization of Udmurtia, its chairman Mnatsakan Arakelyan and a sympathetic businessman from Bashkiria. According to Mosoyan, the Russian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church did not participate in the construction.
In 2012, the temple was completed, and the community turned to Moscow to Archbishop Yezras with a request to consecrate the church and send a priest. In response, the archbishop asked to renew the ownership of the church and the entire surrounding territory for the diocese and to adopt a charter transferring all power to the rector appointed from Moscow.
The community fulfilled these conditions, but the temple remained uninitiated. As the chairman of the diaspora organization Arakelyan told the BBC, the diocese allegedly put forward two additional requirements: the community was required to pay a salary to a priest sent from Moscow (on top of income from all the rites performed) and to transfer 1.2 million rubles to the diocese’s stabilization fund. The diocese did not answer the question of the BBC about these conditions.
“All this sounded like some kind of requisitions,” Mosoyan sighs. Representatives of the diaspora asked to lower the price and retain their voting rights in the management of the temple, which the diaspora built for its money on land donated by local authorities.
But the dialogue did not work.
A priest appointed from Moscow legally became the head of the parish, but never moved to Izhevsk. As a result, the diaspora has been holding national holidays and classes for children for seven years, but the temple itself and the stone house next to it for the priest are empty.
A similar situation, as the BBC Russian Service found out, has developed not only in Izhevsk. Similar conflicts at one stage or another can now be observed in Altai, in the Kemerovo, Kirov, Novosibirsk and Sverdlovsk regions, earlier the conflict occurred in a parish in Riga, which is part of the same diocese. Initiative groups in Moscow also talk about the accumulated claims of the secular diaspora.
The BBC sent a request for an interview with Bishop Yezras, but was refused. One of the clergy of the diocese in an interview with the BBC challenged some of the allegations retold to him from the secular communities, but he soon called back and asked in no case to quote him, citing his lack of blessing for the interview.
In response to an official request, where the accusations were presented in detail, the diocesan spokeswoman sent the following letter (given in full): “In response to your question, we inform you that there are no problems in the parish life of the Russian and New Nakhichevan diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. If some personalities, based on their own mercantile goals, abuse the parish structure, this is not a problem of the parish.
Therefore, the questions you raised are in no way related to the spiritual and national activities carried out between the dioceses th and parishes. ”
“There will be no Armenian priests, only Russians”
For the Armenian diaspora around the world, the church is more than a place for prayer. After the loss of their own statehood in the Middle Ages, Armenian communities organized around temples. The issues of public life were solved there, traditions were maintained, and business relations were established.
After the collapse of the USSR, Armenian communities in Russian regions also began to actively build churches in order to preserve traditions and pass on language and national culture to future generations. But many of these temples are now empty. And almost everywhere they say that this is a systemic problem in relations with church authorities.
So the Armenian church was closed in Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo region. The temple was built by the local diaspora, it also provided the salary of a priest sent from Moscow. But the diocese raised prices for the performance of sacraments and rites. Parishioners began to express dissatisfaction, and the priest simply left, citing the harsh climate of the region.
“Our church was closed. And now who puts candles? Rats,” lamented Georgy AntonovMirzakhanyan, chairman of the Kemerovo office of the Union of Armenians of Russia. The diocese did not answer the question of the BBC about the closure of churches.
In Novosibirsk, the conflict came to court. As elsewhere, the community built the temple with its own money and transferred the land to the local branch of the AAC, accepting the parish charter sent from Moscow. Then, the parish council began a conflict with a priest sent from Moscow.
After another conversation of the patrons with the priest in elevated tones, they turned off the heating and electricity at the temple and left. In response, by decision of the diocese, the parish council was dissolved; elders replaced by people loyal to Moscow.
“The most sacred thing was stolen from us – faith,” says Artur Khachatryan, chairman of the public organization of the Armenians of the Novosibirsk Region, adding that he took it as a raider seizure. His brother Edik, a former member of the parish council, filed a lawsuit against the diocese, trying to challenge the dissolution of the council. But the court recognized the actions of church hierarchs as legal.
In the same way, in the Kirov region, the parish council, whose rights were limited by the charter written in Moscow, lost control of the church, built for its own money. In an interview with the BBC, the main sponsor of the construction of the temple, Furman Abrahamyan, said that he had severed all ties with the archbishop and considered his actions unworthy. Independently from each other, representatives of the Armenian diaspora in the Altai Republic and the Kemerovo region decided not to go to the priests of the AAC to consecrate khachkars – large carved stone crosses that the Armenians traditionally put in the symbolic places of cities.
The decision to invite Russian priests was allegedly made after the Armenian Church announced that they would consecrate the stones only if the land beneath them was transferred to the diocese, community leaders said. “These are not shepherds of the Armenian people, but some kind of mafia,” says Georgy Antonov-Mirzakhanyan from Kemerovo.
After that, they decided that “there would be no Armenian priests at the event, only Russians,” and turned to the priests of the Russian Orthodox Church for help. Russian priests also consecrated khachkars in Tatarstan and the Vologda Oblast. The diocese did not answer the question of the BBC about the actual transfer of part of the diaspora to the fold of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Not only regions
Numerous conflicts in Russian cities could be perceived in the logic of confrontation between central authorities and regions. But there is no unity within the Armenian community in Moscow. “The Armenian Church has been captured by“ people engaged in the global appropriation of someone else’s property, ”said Ruben Grigoryan, one of the patrons of the construction of the AAC temple complex in Moscow and the owner of the contracting company, in an interview with the BBC.
For his role in the construction of the temple, the developer was awarded the highest AAC award – the Order of St. Gregory the Illuminator – but after a conflict with Archbishop Yezras, he does not go to church and supports the requirement to change the leadership of the AAC.
In 2015, Grigoryan sponsored the creation of the “Armenian Museum of Moscow and the Culture of Nations” in the temple, inspired by the nearby Jewish Museum and the Tolerance Center. However, shortly after the opening, Archbishop Yezras decided to create his own museum and deprived the philanthropist and his museum site. The diocese said that Grigoryan arranged events without the blessing of the clergy, and the museum began to charge entrance fees. The philanthropist denies these facts.
“Among the Armenian youth of the Russian capital, the AAC hierarchs have an absolutely negative attitude,” said David Tonoyan, co-founder of the Association of Armenians of Russia and head of the museum created by Grigoryan. According to him, the clergy “have no contact with the Armenian youth.”
The key episode of misunderstanding and an example of complex relationships, Tonoyan calls the incident at the Armenian Transfiguration Cathedral in Moscow in April 2018.
Then several hundred Moscow Armenians gathered in the temple for a spontaneous rally in support ARTYOM GEODAKYAN I/MTAAGSSE of political protests in Yerevan. Soon, reinforced police detachments arrived at the temple, several dozen people were detained. Tonoyan himself was detained that day during a conversation with priests. He is still convinced that riot police summoned Archbishop Yezras.
In response to the publication of the incident in the Armenian media, the press service of the diocese stated that this was not true, and the residents of neighboring houses could call the police.
Painful centralization
The community’s accusations and claims ultimately end up in two figures in the leadership of the Armenian Church – the head of the Russian and Novokhichevan diocese of the AAC, Archbishop Yezras (Nersisyan) and his elder brother, Catholicos and Patriarch of All Armenians Garegin II, who appointed Ezras to this position.
Garegin II heads the AAC since 1999. Over the past 20 years, lay people, priests, and even two Armenian patriarchs – Jerusalem and Constantinople – have criticized him for his excessive commitment to the material side of church life and the authoritarian style of government.
Under Garegin II, the desire to centralize church management became the main problem between the AAC and the diaspora, said Grach Chilingiryan, professor at the Institute of Oriental Studies at Oxford University in an interview with the BBC. AFP
“The introduction of unified charters for the Armenian Church around the world has become the centralization’s main tool,” Chilingiryan said. These charters, according to the sociologist, caused controversy and contention in the communities, they also caused a series of conflicts that interrupted the careers of many honored priests, and “generated distrust of the church hierarchy.”
Some Armenian media wrote that Garegin II had more monks and monks spewed out of his dignity than all his predecessors put together over the previous 300 years. According to Chilingaryan, although no one knows the exact number of priests erupted from the dignity, it is definitely unusually high by historical standards. The current conflict in the Russian diaspora is unique in its scope, but the Catholicos’s attempts to establish control over foreign parishes have already led to scandals.
In 2011, communities in Nice and Geneva withdrew from obedience to the AAC hierarchs. They refused to accept charters and priests imposed from Armenia. Secular politics and church opposition
In 2018 – shortly after the election of the new Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan – an open opposition to the Catholicos also appeared inside Armenia.
During the mass protests in 2018, when tens of thousands of people across the country were seeking a peaceful change of power, a group of clergy and believers decided that the time had come for reform within the church.
Having united in the movement “New Armenia – the new patriarch”, they demanded the resignation of the Catholicos and a number of bishops and the election of a new leader.
The spiritual leader of the movement was the charismatic traditionalist monk Father Koryun (Arakelyan), rector of one of the oldest departments of Armenian Christianity – the Holy Gayane Monastery in the Mother See of Etchmiadzin.
Father Koryun, who studied the monastic life of the AAC-related ancient Eastern churches in Syria and Egypt, enjoys authority as an adherent of traditions and the creator of the first fullfledged monastery and brotherhood in post-Soviet Armenia. “Our Catholicos does not have the faith that every simple believer has for God,” Father Koryun told reporters in June 2018.
“The time has come for our church to be free, cleansed, and we have an impeccable patriarch with immaculate behavior, prayer and loving his flock. ” In response, the Catholicos deprived Koryun’s father of the holy dignity “for his behavior and anticanonical activity improper for the clergyman” and removed him from running the monastery.
The decision was publicly supported by a number of bishops, and Bishop Michael of Shirak (Ajapayan) announced on his Facebook page about the “moral death” of a monk In a conversation with the BBC correspondent, Father Koryun dismissed such accusations. According to him, the true head of the church is not “fell into heresy” Garegin II, but Jesus Christ.
The monk is sure that as soon as the new Catholicos is elected, he will immediately restore in the dignity all the priests erupted by his predecessor.
Orthodox reformer
Deprivation of dignity did not stop the monk. Although formally he does not even have the right to put on a monastic robe, in April, at the head of a small group of supporters, Father Koryun arrived in Izhevsk at the invitation of the leader of the local community. There he served the liturgy and baptized several dozen people. “Father Koryun surprised us,” says Arsen Moloyan, who had been waiting five years for the official church to send a priest to their city. “He arrived. He baptized children for free. He also buried, blessed, prayed. He behaved modestly, ate little. Amazing person.” Moloyan says that after meeting with his father, Koryun no longer wants to talk “with the spiritless priests of Yezras from Moscow.” In an interview with the BBC, Father Koryun said for the first time that he will participate in the preparation of priests for Russian parishes that have broken relations with the AAC hierarchs. He is supported by the Archbishop Tiran (Kuregyan) living in Russia, who was expelled from the dignity by the decree of the Catholicos after a long conflict with Vladyka Yezras, who shocked the Armenian community in the early 2000s. Archbishop Tiran was the forerunner of Ezras in the Russian pulpit. And, apparently, he could lead that new structure into which parishes not controlled by the Catholicos and his brother can unite. Initiating new priests without the blessing of the head of the church actually means creating an alternative structure. Father Koryun says he does not consider the creation of independent parishes a split. If the Catholicos fell into heresy and violated church canons, the monks are exempted from obedience to him, he argues. STANISLAV KRASILNIKOV I/MTAAGSSE
“For me, the church is not Garegin, but our holy fathers,” says Father Koryun. “I’d rather go to hell with my fathers than to heaven with him.” And adds, smiling: “This is a joke.”