The Azerbaijani government demolished in early April an Armenian cathedral located in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to local media reports, stirring up a long-running conflict in a border region whose territory has been disputed between both countries since the 1990s.
The Armenian Apostolic Church decried the demolition of the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God in the city of Stepanakert, saying it aimed to “erase the Armenian trace” from the region.
The Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God in 2024. Credit: Golden/wikimedia CC BY 4.0
The development comes less than three years after a military offensive by Azerbaijan led to the dissolution of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, an area internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but historically populated and controlled by ethnic Armenian Christians until 2023.
The 2023 offensive prompted the flight of more than 120,000 ethnic Armenians and left hundreds dead. Human rights groups and Armenian leaders have described the exodus as a case of ethnic cleansing.
Armenia, a country roughly the size of the state of Maryland, has a population of roughly three million people. It is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran to the south. Around 95% of the population belongs to the Armenian Apostolic Church and 0.6% belong to the Catholic Church.
Several human rights organizations and Armenian activists described the demolition of the cathedral as a part of a broader pattern of systematic cultural erasure in the region.
The demolition took place shortly before the 111th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, during which an estimated 1 to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were killed and millions more were forcibly deported by the Ottoman government during World War I.
Satellite images before and after the reported demolition of the cathedral. Credit: Google Maps.
The Azerbaijan government has not announced the cathedral’s demolition or publicly explained it, though pro-government media outlets said the Armenian government was responsible for the destruction of Azeri religious monuments in the region, seeming to suggest retaliation for those alleged crimes as justification.
Armenian news outlet Hetq claimed to have verified the church’s demolition with satellite images that showed the white paving stones around the cathedral, but not the church itself, which prompted several human rights organizations and media publications to verify the reports.
The cathedral started being built in July 2006 and consecrated in April 2019 and was the largest Armenian church in all of Nagorno-Karabakh. The cathedral was used as a bomb shelter during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 but did not suffer significant damages.
Armenian cultural heritage watchdog Monument Watch had reported that the Church of Saint Jacob, built in 2007 and located in the same city, had also been demolished in early April.
The Armenian Apostolic Church is the ancient national church of Armenia, and is one of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, a roughly 70 million-strong communion that also includes the Coptic Orthodox Church.
The Oriental Orthodox Churches diverged from the Church after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D., largely because of differences over formulas used to define Christ’s nature. In recent decades, the disagreement has come to be seen as primarily semantic, with all sides professing the same faith in Christ’s divinity and humanity, albeit in different language.
The Armenian Apostolic Church said in an Apr. 23 statement that “It is obvious that the Azerbaijani government continues to target Armenian Christian holy sites with the aim of erasing the Armenian trace from Artsakh.”
“This state-level vandalism once again proves that Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian policy has not changed, which makes statements about establishing a stable and lasting peace with Armenia questionable.”
Church authorities also called Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to take “urgent and effective steps” to stop the Azeri regime from wiping out Armenian cultural heritage in the region.
However, when asked about reports of the cathedral’s destruction on April 18, Pashinyan said: “My concern is the historical and cultural monuments located in the territory of Armenia.”
Last week, Pashinyan was asked again about the demolition, and he said that the Armenian government was currently seeking to obtain more information but said he was reluctant to make the destruction “a subject of international discussions at the state level.”
‘On such issues, especially at this stage, one must be prudent, because they are a double-edged sword’, Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan’s government recognized the Azeri sovereignty over the region in 2022 and has repeatedly said that the issue is closed for his administration.
The demolition comes amid a confrontation between the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian government.
Prosecutors opened a criminal case against the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church and barred him from leaving the country in February.
Karekin II, the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, was due to travel to Austria for a Feb. 16-19 meeting of the Armenian Apostolic Church’s Bishops’ Synod, of which he is president.
Armenian authorities accuse Karekin II, who has led the Armenian Apostolic Church since 1999, of the obstruction of justice. The Church dismisses the charges as unwarranted interference in its internal affairs.
On Jan. 4, 2026, Pashinyan, who has served as PM since 2018, posted a video in which he read aloud a statement that set out a “roadmap” for the reform of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The text called for the removal of Karekin II, the election of a new Catholicos of All Armenians, and the introduction of new measures to ensure financial transparency and upright conduct among clergy.
The video showed eight Armenian Orthodox bishops signing the document at Pashinyan’s residence. Two others, who were not present, also endorsed it.
One of the 10 signatories of the reform roadmap text was Bishop Gevork Saroyan, head of the Diocese of Masyatsotn. On Jan. 10, Karekin II removed Saroyan from his post, citing abuse of office.
On Jan. 14, a civil court ordered that Saroyan be reinstated. Karekin II responded on Jan. 27 by dismissing Saroyan from the clerical state.
On Feb. 14, the Prosecutor General of Armenia opened a criminal case against Karekin II, accusing him of obstructing the court order to reinstate Saroyan. The Church leader was also reportedly blocked from attending the synod of bishops of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Austria.
Karekin II’s legal representative described the move as “direct interference in the internal affairs of the Church.”
Pashinyan claimed that the meeting in Austria was part of a plan to create a “puppet Catholicosate” outside of Armenia.
He said: “I will not allow this. Armenia is not going to remain an observer. The reaction will be very tough. We will redirect the attention of those who have their eyes on the treasures of Etchmiadzin, hidden under the mask of benefactors, in a completely different direction. If additional measures are needed, they will be taken.”
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The Vatican has been criticized for its ties to the Azeri regime, which is accused by human rights organizations of ethnically-based persecution of Armenian Christians in border territories.
Azerbaijan signed agreements in September with the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital and the Vatican Apostolic Library and Apostolic Archives, alarming critics who accuse the Azeri regime of human rights abuses against the Armenian minority and of practicing “caviar diplomacy” by using its cultural and economic power to shape Vatican policy in the South Caucasus region.
In April 2025, the Azeri regime held a conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, prompting widespread backlash.
The conference was entitled “Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity.” But Armenian activists and Church leaders called the event part of a broader campaign to erase Armenian Christian heritage from disputed territories.
Promotional materials for the conference included distinctly Azeri reads on West Asian history, including a display of the medieval Armenian monastery of Dadivank, with the claim that it belonged to the “Caucasian Albanian” culture, an Azeri government claim widely disputed by historians.
“This has no basis in reality. They say these are Caucasian Albanian churches, but Caucasian Albanians disappeared in the 8th century,” Orthodox Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, ecumenical director of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, told The Pillar back in April 2025.
Despite these controversies, the conference received a letter of congratulations from Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.
Months before the 2020 offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva was awarded the Order of Pope Pius IX at the Vatican.
Ilqar Mukhtarov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the Holy See, received the same distinction on April 3, 2025.
The Heydar Aliyev Foundation lists the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Vatican Museums among its partners and several restoration projects that it is supporting at the Vatican.
The list includes the Roman Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, the Catacombs of Commodilla, and the Catacombs of San Sebastiano, the restoration of a statue of Zeus in the Vatican Museums, the restoration and translation of more than 3,000 books and 75 manuscripts in the Vatican Apostolic Library, the restoration of a bas-relief with the encounter between Pope Leo the Great and Attila the Hun in St. Peter’s Basilica, and the restoration of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
According to Italian outlet Irpi Media, the donations amounted to 640,000 euros (around $730,000). But an Azeri official said publicly in 2020 that the figure was “over 1 million euros.” Many of the restoration works came after 2020, suggesting the actual sum could be even higher.
One of the largest restoration projects was unveiled in 2024, when the Vatican City State Governorate announced an agreement between the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls and the Heydar Aliyev Foundation.
Observers suggest links between the Vatican and the former Soviet republic were strengthened thanks to Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, who is now prefect of the Dicastery for Eastern Churches and was the apostolic nuncio to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia from 2001 to 2011.
During Gugerotti’s service as nuncio, Azeri authorities signed a bilateral agreement with the Holy See in 2011, appointing an ambassador the same year, and began to have frequent meetings, both in Azerbaijan and the Vatican, with Holy See officials, among them then-Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the then-president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
According to Irpi Media, Ravasi is another central figure connecting Azerbaijan and the Vatican.
Ravasi opened the doors to Azeri-funded restoration projects in the Vatican with a 2012 agreement to restore Roman catacombs, as well as another to translate and restore manuscripts in the Apostolic Library.