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BREAKING NEWS: AUG. 21, 2020 — France and Bulgaria Armenians Join Global Movement Against Catholicos Karekin II’s Attempts to Abolish Democracy in Armenian Church

Posted on August. 31. 2020

BY APPO JABARIAN
Executive Publisher / Managing Editor
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On August 21, leading members of Bulgarian Armenian Church announced their strong opposition to Catholicos Karekin II’s attempts to Abolish Democracy in Armenian Church. By taking such determined steps, Bulgarian Armenians have joined several Armenian Church parishes in France engaged to protect the original democratic by-laws of the Armenian Apostolic Church in France.
Recently several American Armenians in Eastern and Western United States began mounting strong opposition to impose changes in the church By-Laws. Many American Armenians labeled those changes as being forced by Catholicos Karekin II and his fellow clansmen Arch. Hovnan Derderian of Western Diocese and Arch. Yezras Nersisyan of Moscow as ‘utterly unacceptable.”
During an August 21 USA Armenian Life TV live broadcast on AMGA TV, renown public speaker and investigative journalist Vosgan Mekhitarian reported: “The Primate of the Armenian Diocese of France, Bishop Vahan Hovhannisyan appointed the former Pastor of Nice, the infamous Father Grigor Khachatryan as Diocesan Vicar General for an important diocese like France where the situation has been deteriorating on a daily basis causing huge alarm among French Armenians. After causing serious damage to the parish in Nice, this discredited clergy now is expected to ‘solve’ the issues of other parishes. Like North America, By-Laws violations are taking place inside the Armenian Diocese of France, and the ‘author-hero’ of all these By-Laws violations is Catholicos Karekin II, with a hidden motive of usurping all the institutions of the Diaspora and their material wealth by attempting to make By-Laws changes within the diocesan life of the Diaspora. However, his attempts failed in Nice, where the elected community council stood up and refused to adopt any new diocesan regulations.”
Mekhitarian added: “In order to suppress this popular uprising, Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II through his political connections tried to impose his dictates through the French Courts. But he failed to lay his hands on the real estate assets. In retaliation, he unilaterally issued an order on January 26, 2012 declaring the Armenian Apostolic Church of the Assumption as a ‘non-apostolic entity.’”
Mekhitarian observed that the current “‘brush-fire’ has now reached Bulgaria’s Armenian community causing great alarm. The Catholicos is threatening to deprive the community of a priest if they continue refusing to accept his newly dictated ILLEGAL By-Laws. This is a new scandal when the whole Diaspora is struggling with its daily existential struggles. The Catholicos of All Armenians is trying to destroy the faith of our people in the Armenian church, which has been a repository for our people’s national values for centuries. If we remain silent, we would be encouraging lawlessness and become complicit in the moral decay and downfall of the Church. The people should hold accountable the parasites in the Church for all their nefarious acts. Our people need to speak up and reclaim and save their national church.”
In an August 5 open letter addressed to Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, Primate of the Armenian Diocese of France, and Mr. Robert Azilazian, President of the Diocesan Council, Mr. Richard Takvorian President of the Parish Council of the Armenian Apostolic Church Saint Mary in Nice, France stated: “You must have been aware of the threats, blackmail, and intimidation which our community was subjected to since the appointment by the Catholicos Karekin II of the priest Vatche in Nice 15 years ago, who has sowed terror in our community and who was later banned from living in the Alps-Maritimes. He has always been protected by Catholicos Karekin II against the publicly humiliated Primate of the day, Monsignor Norvan Zakarian, who found solace by resigning his post. … The very same threats, blackmail and intimidation are still being exerted today in the matter of the signing of the parish statutes (By-Laws), —which our community has already rejected with overwhelming majority during its General Assembly of February 26th, 2006.”
Mr. Takvorian continued: “Yes! More than ten years of ordeal, during which Catholicos Karekin II instrumentalized consecutively priest Vatche who terrorized our community; the Primate of the time Mgr. Norvan; the President of the Diocese Djololian, then Azilazian; St. Philippe Church, and today the falsified signature, it seems, of the Primate Mgr. Vahan, in order to impose his law (dictatorship-editor) on us, without forgetting the stratagem of an intriguing ‘re-consecration’!”
Mr. Takvorian lamented: “As the whole world is in deep crisis following the Covid 19 Virus, when economies collapse, unemployment rises, civil peace is threatened, war rages in Armenia; when Aliyev threatens to blow up the Medzamor nuclear power plant; when presently the Turkish-Azeri diaspora is dangerously gathering strength and provoking the Armenian diaspora which does not cease from breaking up,— Catholicos Karekin II appears to be totally engaged in dividing and weakening our Diaspora instead of gathering and strengthening it, particularly by his encyclical of January 27, 2012, in which, without consulting the Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of France, he has sanctioned an entire community and dragged it through the mud, and ordered, for the first time in our Church history since 301 A.D., the deletion of the attribute “Apostolic” from the name of our Holy Apostolic Church of St. Mary of Nice, thereby threatening the foundations of our church which was built stone by stone by the first arrivals of our community, and consecrated by Mgr. Balakian in 1927.”
Mr. Takvorian added: “The Catholicos treated the Armenian Apostolic Church in Geneva the same way he treated the parish of Nice by defrocking their revered priest, Father Abel who was appreciated by all, by closing their church while creating a new competing association, — all like in Nice, acting likewise in Sofia (Bulgaria), in Vilnius and Riga (the Baltic countries), by different destabilizing attempts against our churches in Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as against 12 parishes in Russia as it was mentioned last year in a BBC’s program of Russian language, and, again by maneuvers in Canada and the USA.”
Mr. Takvorian concluded: “In general, everyone understands that the strategy of Catholicos Karekin II consists in creating such religious communities [i.e. parishes] across the entire Armenian Diaspora wherein the priest will dominate the laity by means of replacing notably the functions of the laity in our churches with prerogatives reserved for the religious only, and not only by managing the finances and acting as repreentatives of the faithul with the authorities of their respective countries! Can you imagine: this is utterly illegal in France, being aganst the laws of 1901 and 1905. It is against the [principle of] separation of church and state, and threatens the fundamentals of the Republic!”
The core issue is that Catholicos Karekin II, HD and their cartel are attempting to abolish democracy in Armenian Church unilaterally eliminating the rights of tens of thousands of church lay members worldwide starting from the United States, Canada, South America, Australia, all the way to France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Bulgaria.
The prospect for the future of the Church is gradually improving as more and more church lay members are strongly opposing such attemtps.
THE SITUATION IN ARMENIA AND FORMER SOVIET SPACE: As things stand, thousands of lay members of Armenian Church in Armenia, Russia and other former Soviet space continue to be deprived of their democratic rights in the Church.
Catholicos Karekin II, Arch. Hovnan Derderian as well as Karekin II’s blood brother Arch. Yezras Nersisyan of Moscow are doing everything to take back the church to the middle ages. They seem to be trying to re-establish long-outdated feodalistic system. But thousands of Armenians in the Free World who have been accustomed to democracy in the church according to the terms of the Armenian National Constitution, are not only defending their democratic church By-Laws but they are also lending a helping hand to their brethren and sisters in the former Soviet space to reinstate their democratic rights in their dioceses and parishes.
If Karekin II with tacit support from Arch. Derderian, continues to block the Armenian citizens’ democratic rights in the Church, citizens of Armenia and other newly established democracies in the former Soviet Union are entitled to take their case to Courts.
Afterall Armenia is not a ‘banana republic.’ It is a vibrant democracy and it has legal obligations toward its citizens. As a sovereign state, Armenia has the fiduciary duty to defend its citizens constitutional rights just like the United States and other long-established democracies of the Free World.