Garegin and six archbishops and bishops were indicted and banned from leaving Armenia in February one day after Pashinian pledged to prevent an Armenian episcopal conference in Austria organized by the church. The accusations levelled against Garegin stem from his January 27 decision to defrock a pro-government bishop involved in Pashinian’s controversial campaign to oust the Catholicos. The bishop, Gevorg Saroyan, was dismissed earlier in January as head of a church diocese.

With Pashinian’s encouragement, Saroyan refused to obey the decision and went on to challenge it in court. In an unprecedented injunction, a district court ruled on January 16 that Saroyan must be reinstated pending its verdict on the lawsuit.

Garegin and the six other clergymen are accused of obstructing the execution of that court order. Their lawyers maintain that Armenian courts have no jurisdiction over internal church affairs. They as well as Armenian opposition figures and other critics of the government say the case is part of Pashinian’s yearlong campaign against the top clergy.

Garegin received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of supporters who gathered outside a court in the town of Vagharshapat when he arrived for the opening session of the trial. The crowd chanting “His Holiness!” and signing a church hymn in his honor included opposition lawmakers who walked out of the Armenian parliament to show support for the Catholicos.

“Today is a day of shame,” one of the lawmakers, Marianna Ghahramanian said on the parliament floor. “Today they are trying the Catholicos of All Armenians, our spiritual father, the leader of our church. This is a disgrace and something unheard of.”

The opening court hearing was held behind the closed doors and lasted for only several minutes because the presiding judge, Hakob Manukian, recused himself from the case. According to Garegin’s chief lawyer, Ara Zohrabian, Manukian cited a conflict of interest, arguing that he received his lawyer’s license at a time when Armenia’s national bar association was headed by Zohrabian.

“I welcome his move because in essence, he refused to be part of this shameful process,” Zohrabian told journalists.

The case is now due to be assigned to another Vagharshapat judge, who will then set the date of the next hearing.

Following the hearing, Garegin led the angry supporters to the nearby Echmiadzin cathedral of the Armenian Church where he led a prayer service on the occasion. In a sermon read out there, he thanked them for the support, condemned the “illegal and trumped-up charges” brought against him and the bishops and accused the authorities of trying to “subjugate” the ancient church.

“We are full of faith and determination to defend our just rights guaranteed by our country’s constitution and fundamental principles of international law,” he said.

Garegin is the first supreme head of the church prosecuted in Armenia’s post-Soviet history. Even Soviet authorities had never formally prosecuted his predecessors.

The unprecedented trial has also been denounced by key Armenian Diaspora organizations. The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), the largest Diaspora charity, said it “raises serious questions about religious freedom and respect for the rule of law” in Armenia. The charges levelled against Garegin have “no basis in law or in our historical traditions,” it added in a statement.

For its part, the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF) condemned the trial “in the strongest possible terms” and reaffirmed its “total support” for the Catholicos, saying that he is prosecuted for a “decision that falls exclusively under the internal governance of the Church.”

“Even during the decades of Soviet domination, when the Church was deprived of its property, placed under constant surveillance and subjected to relentless persecution, the authorities did not go so far as to indict the Catholicos of All Armenians,” read a CCAF statement.

Pashinian began pressuring Garegin to resign in June 2025 shortly after the Catholicos accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during an international conference in Switzerland. Three Armenian archbishops and one bishop were arrested in the following months on different charges strongly denied by them. They all were moved to house arrest this year.

Pashinian has used different lines of attack on the church during his campaign praised by Azerbaijani officials. He said until December that Garegin and other top clerics at odds with him must go because they had secret sex affairs in breach of their vows of celibacy. He then began accusing them of spying for a foreign country, presumably Russia. He did not offer any proof of the allegation dismissed by Moscow.

The day before Garegin’s indictment, Pashinian turned on eight prominent Diaspora figures in the United States and Europe who condemned his “attacks” on the church. He claimed that they want to remove the seat of the Catholicos from Armenia and seize church treasures kept in Echmiadzin.

Pashinian’s detractors say he simply wants to please Azerbaijan or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe.

—