Pashinyan vows permanent crackdown on “depraved” clerics

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has resumed online attacks against members of the clergy, this time targeting Archbishop Arshak.

“Why have those depraved ‘clergy’ and their depraved ‘benefactors’ become active again? Nothing — we will punish them again. And permanently,” he wrote.

In a follow‑up post he added: “Ktrich Nersisyan, tell that depraved Archbishop Arshak to get back into his place. Literally get back into his place and literally depraved.”

In another message he stated that given past criticism, “when speaking about the depraved high‑ranking clergy, I will use exclusively the language of the the Armenian Book of Canons,” referring to the canonical code of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

He pointed out that in the Armenian Book of Canons, it is written that a depraved (arch)bishop—in this case Archbishop Arshak—must be defrocked. “I mean, that’s exactly the terminology used in our Church’s collection of canons. According to the Armenian Book of Canons, Archbishop Arshak is depraved.”

“I’m waiting for a reaction from Ktrich Nersisyan so we can characterize him only using the definitions from the Armenian Book of Canons. No more banging,” Pashinyan wrote.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared on his Facebook page that “it is necessary to take concrete steps to liberate the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and organize new Catholicos elections.” He added that in this phase “we must create a Coordinating group to arrange the organizational issues of the above agenda,” and that “he will take responsibility for selecting the first ten members of the Coordinating group.