Lawyer says state seeks to turn church into civil arm

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lawyer Raffi Aslanyan, commenting on the legal case involving Bishop Gevorg Saroyan, said that turning the Catholicos’s decree into a matter for a “clearly unlawful legal dispute” is enough to grasp the nature of what he described as the Armenian atheist government’s campaign against the Church.

He stated that the current government’s goal is to transform the Armenian Apostolic Church into “a civil appendage serving state interests” and to label this as “church reform.”

“The court, as an interim measure, reinstated claimant Arman Saroyan to the position of Primate of the Masis Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Yes, you read that right: a civilian, in office. This is exactly what today’s authorities want: to turn the Armenian Church into a civil wing serving state interests, under the banner of ‘reform.’

Turning the Catholicos’s decree alone into a subject of a baseless legal case is enough to understand the government’s intentions toward the Armenian Church, and none of them is spiritual,” he wrote. “The next step might be for defrocked priests to sue in court to be ‘reordained.’”

By a ruling from the Armavir Court of First Instance, Bishop Gevorg Saroyan has been reinstated as head of the Masis Diocese pending a final court decision. The bishop said the court granted his request for an interim measure.