Torosyan: Church may be epicenter of hypocrisy

PanARMENIAN.Net - Arsen Torosyan, a member of Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract faction in parliament, responded on Facebook to ongoing controversy surrounding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s remarks about the Church and the resulting backlash from clergy.

“While I don’t belong to any church, I still feel entitled to publicly ask: Do all church servants practice what they preach? Or preach what they practice?” he wrote.

“Everyone knows the answer to this question, but discussing it is considered ‘shameful’—because we might discover that the largest dose of hypocrisy is concentrated precisely in the Church, which should be the opposite.”

Torosyan stressed that the time had come for this false piety to be exposed and judged by the public, even if that made clergy and believers uncomfortable.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had earlier provoked outrage by likening churches to storage rooms during a cabinet meeting. He later published Facebook posts containing harsh remarks toward clergy. His wife, Anna Hakobyan, also joined in, referring to clergymen as “the country’s top pedophiles.”