Former Chairman of the State Revenue Committee, David Ananyan, in a Facebook post, addressed the country’s current state, warning against the dangers of nationwide silence and urging spiritual leaders to assume moral leadership.
“A whole nation—with its official and unofficial political forces, public figures, and sadly, even spiritual leaders—has entered a strange and vulnerable state of national waiting.
We await the unpredictable moves of a single person—Nikol Pashinyan—who has already announced his intentions, yet cloaks them in staged outbursts and erratic decisions bordering on psychological imbalance. We await his final command to his army of heretics, the rallying cry that could mark the beginning of a sacrilegious campaign against the Catholicosate—our last sanctity of spiritual identity.
And while he acts, we, as a nation, wait. We hope, with stubborn naivety and internal tremors of shame, for a glimmer of reason from him. We hope his fears, his pressures, or his shaky calculations might somehow serve us. That hope alone is already a disgraceful defeat.
We never expected the Armenian Apostolic Church to become a political opposition. Quite the opposite—we’ve long criticized those who sought political leadership within the Church. But now, with the political field suffocating in silence, fear, and calculation, and the state transformed into a structure dependent on one man’s will, we are left with no alternative.
Now is not the time for waiting. Passive anticipation has become a symbol of national demoralization, loss of dignity, and spiritual impotence. It is time for spiritual leadership—not to seize power, but to ignite moral courage and restore national dignity.
This is not a time for spiritual silence. It is time to speak the truth of the spirit.
Lead, shepherds of Armenia, for the flock is lost.
Act now, because every second we wait turns us into national patchworks,” the statement concludes.
During a press conference, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, asked how he plans to “liberate” the Catholicosate, said: “It will be freed the same way Armenia was freed from Serzh Sargsyan in 2018.” He later called for preparations for a “Great Spiritual Gathering at the central square of Etchmiadzin.”
