Nice, August 5, 2020.
OPEN LETTER
His Grace Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, Primate of the Armenian Diocese of France,
Mr. Robert Azilazian, President of the Diocesan Council.
Please find below the extract from the Bulletin N°10 of the Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of France dated June 9, 2018, under whose dateline of Nice, August 5, 2020, the following is indicated:
“THE PRIMATE MEETS WITS HIS HOLINESS KAREKIN II
“His Excellency Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, Primate and Pontifical Legate for Western Europe, met with His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, during his visit to St. Etchmiadzin to participate in the sessions of the Supreme Spiritual Council. At this meeting, His Holiness presented a written report on the state of the Armenian Church in France and Western Europe and discussed various programs and challenges. “His Holiness praised the efforts made by Bishop Vahan and the Diocesan Council towards the resolution of the question of Nice, the creation of various programs for youth, the creation of links with the believers via the internet and for the various publications produced, as well as the pursuit of the statutes of the parishes and Dioceses. His Holiness insisted on the importance of harmonizing the statutes of all the parishes of the Diocese to be aligned with the canons of the Armenian Church, adding that “at the end” the statutes are the property of each Parish and they have the possibility of discussing and modifying them during their annual assemblies, as long as these modifications conform to the canons of our Church”.”
In addition, in the Diocesan Council’s communiqué of February 11, 2019, you indicate that “you are pleased to inform of the signing, by the Association of the Armenian Church of St. Mary of Nice, on the past February 5th, of the statutes in force of the Diocese of France of the Armenian Apostolic Church. In a letter addressed to the Diocesan Council on the same date, the Association of the Armenian Church of St. Mary specifies that it would submit for adoption to the Extraordinary General Assembly of its members, scheduled for March 1st, said statutes which had enabled it in 2006 to accede to its integration into the diocesan Union, pending the new diocesan and parish statutes, that would be proposed by the Diocesan Council to all the parishes of our Church in France. The Diocesan Council welcomes with satisfaction these steps which mark a notable advance towards the normalization of the situation of our Holy Armenian Apostolic Church in Nice”.
Paris, February 11, 2020.
In your letter of August 1, 2020, however, you allude, incomprehensibly, to breaches of commitments allegedly not undertaken by our parish, –which is absolutely false,– for which reason Bishop Vahan Hovhannessian is recalling the Reverend Father Komitas Hovnanian.
In view of: the terms of the memorandum signed on April 14, 2019; the message of the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II to the effect that “the statutes are the property of each Parish, and that they have the possibility of discussing and modifying them during their annual assemblies as long as these modifications are in conformity with the secular canons of our Church“; the commitment of His Holiness by his signature; the various communications of the Diocese herewith attached,– your demand for the recall of the Reverend Father Komitas Hovnanian is inappropriate, illegitimate, and unfounded under these conditions.
Convinced of your deep humanity, of your respect for the word given, of your honesty, sense of responsibility and commitment to your faith, dear Bishop Vahan Hovhanessian, you are surely not a man ready to renounce his own signature. Moreover, we noticed that, curiously, the signature “Bishop Vahan” appearing on the attached press release of August 1, 2020, does not seem to be yours, if we compare it to that of the attached Memorandum.
After so many exchanges and reciprocal commitments that resulted in our “re-consecration”, no one has the right to unilaterally sanction an entire community without any valid reason and to oppose particularly the instructions of the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II, which were published at their time in the attached Bulletin N°10 of the Diocese dated June 9th, 2018, which we invite you to consult.
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 (see the attached explanatory note). The very same threats, blackmail and intimidation are still being exerted today in the matter of the signing of the parish statutes, –which our community has already rejected with overwhelming majority during its General Assembly of February 26th, 2006,– until, as a punitive measure, the prohibiton of our beloved Rev. Komitas Hovnanian to serve in our community in case our parish refuses to sign said statutes.
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 on us, without forgetting the stratagem of an intriguing “re-consecration”!
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 said our church which was built stone by stone by the first arrivals of our community, and consecrated by Mgr. Balakian in 1927.
The Catholicos treated the Armenian Apostolic Church in Geneva the same way he treated the parish of Nice (see attached) 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 pprogram of Russian language, and, again by maneuvers in Canada and the USA.
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!
Even today, collateral damage, division and manipulation continue to rage!
Supported by Catholicos Karekin are three persons from among our parish council: Zareh Mardirossian, Aram Kartun and Nurhan Baliozian. Zareh Mardirossian has served our church relentlessly from a young age particularly in Nice. Fearing for his life, he resigned in 2010 from the presidency of our church in the face of threats, blackmail and intimidation by the priest Vatche. Likewise, Aram Kartun and Nurhan Baliozian became the Trojan Horse of Catholicos Karekin II within our community, after –it should be remembered,– these three, as Members of the Conciliation Commission of our Parish (commissioned by its Administration Council for three years in 2016) failed to reach an agreement with the Diocese on any issue. They were unable to realize that it is Catholicos Karekin II who was pulling the strings and no one else. Nor were they abe to realize that, among the 20 parishes out of 25 in France who do not accept the statutes imposed by Catholicos Karekin II, none was sanctioned and deprived of the qualifier “Apostolic” like our Parish of Nice, probably because, unlike us, they do not possess any real estate such as our Barsamian School Complex, regarding which the priest Vatche used to publicly shout loud and clear that his patron the Catholicos wants to grab it!
However, despite having lost the last elections of the Parish Council in June 10, 2018, today our three former members –Zareh, Nurhan and Aram– are sending threatening messages against our community, accusing the current Parish Council of treason, crying out for their resignation, sowing doubt and discord on the path of the Council, trying to manipulate the minds of honest people by inviting them to rise up against the Parish Council, and dreaming of organizing an extraordinary general meeting in order to seize power offering it, on their knees, to a strong and omnipotent priest!
Under these conditions, the Parish Council, supported by the vast majority of our community, is determined more than ever on the validity of its positions. Drawing on its painful experience of more than 10 years and the lessons learned from the past, it totally refuses the sanction –once again inflicted by Catholicos Karekin II– of removing the great servant of our Holy Church, our admirable Reverend Father Komitas Hovnanian.
If you do not wish to resolve this problem before the courts against the Diocese for non-compliance with your words, writings, agreements and commitments that led to our “re-consecration”, we are making a final appeal to you to be guided by the Christian faith which unites us!
After years of suffering, ordeal and nightmare in our communities, the time has come to invite our intellectuals, leaders of our associations at the national level with “absent subscribers”, and the potent forces of our Diaspora to denounce these destructive actions against the interests vital to our Diaspora and Armenia!
It is in this hope that we are forwarding to Your Grace and to the President of the Diocesan Council, our respectful greetings.
Parish Council of the Armenian Apostolic Church Saint Mary, Nice.
[sgd.] Richard Takvorian
President
Armenian Apostolic Church Saint Mary, Nice.