Several hundred people, among them many central and local government officials and other ruling party figures, also joined the ceremony which Pashinian said is part of his drive to depose the supreme head of the church, Catholicos Garegin II.
The former priest, Stepan Asatrian, publicly admitted supporting that campaign right after being defrocked by the church leadership a week ago. He has defied the widely anticipated decision, refusing to leave the Hovanavank monastery 30 kilometers northwest of Yerevan where he has served for the past several years.
Several priests dispatched by the church’s Mother See in Echmiadzin were driven out of the monastery by Asatrian’s supporters when they visited it last week to formally notify him of his defrocking. The aggressive men went on to attack, threaten and swear at journalists present there. Police officers standing nearby did not intervene despite witnessing the ugly scenes.
Another Echmiadzin-based cleric as well as a lawyer representing the church, Ara Zohrabian, tried unsuccessfully to visit Hovanavank ahead of Sunday’s mass declared illegal by the church. A group of men presenting themselves as residents of a local village did not allow them to even approach the worship site belonging to the Mother See. According to Zohrabian, a deputy interior minister then told them to leave the scene to “avoid clashes.”
“This is a crime,” the lawyer told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday. “The police demonstrated unlawful inaction. The police did not ensure our right to free movement.”
Another law-enforcement body, the Investigative Committee, sent on Saturday summonses to 21 priests serving at the surrounding Aragatsotn Diocese of the Armenian Church. They all ignored the summonses, saying that they cannot skip Sunday masses in their parishes. Garegin’s office says that the authorities tried to keep them from going to Hovanavank and disrupting the “fake liturgy.”
The church officially protested against the holding of the ceremony on Saturday, saying that it violates an Armenian law which makes it a crime to obstruct activities of religious organizations.
“In fact, no one interferes in the affairs of the church,” Justice Minister Srbuhi Galian insisted on Monday.
The Hovanavank ceremony took place amid tight security, with police presence outside the monastery, mostly built in the 13th century, stretching for several kilometers. It was marred by an incident during which a man shouted at Asatrian, saying that he has no right to hold a mass. Plainclothes officers quickly shut his mouth and removed him from the church.
Moments later, the defrocked priest thanked Pashinian for helping him “keep my mouth open” and speak out against the top clergy. The audience responded with applause not allowed inside Armenian churches.
In a video message broadcast earlier on Sunday, Pashinian declared that the Hovanavank ceremony “symbolizes the start of the practical phase of the liberation process of the Mother See.” He said nothing about his further actions. Armenian opposition leaders and other government critics scoffed at that statement after seeing images of the less-than-spectacular attendance of the event.
Ishkhan Saghatelian, a leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), spoke of a “botched show at Hovanavank” while Levon Zurabian, the deputy chairman of the Armenian National Congress, called it an “epic failure.”
“The ritual performed by the defrocked priest backed by Pashinian and the police acting on his orders was supposed to signal the return of Pashinian’s rallying ‘greatness’ and the beginning of the ‘liberation’ of the Mother See,” Zurabian wrote on Facebook. “But the opposite of what Nikol expected happened. The people rejected the filth, division, and lawlessness that had been pouring from the lips of Pashinian and his propagandists in recent days.”
Pashinian first threatened to forcibly remove Garegin from his Echmiadzin headquarters on June 26. In a July 20 appeal, the premier urged supporters to be ready to “free” the Mother See. He said they should specifically gear up for a rally at an adjacent square. Opposition leaders warned Pashinian against trying to seize the seat of the Catholicos. They also told their own supporters to be ready to gather there in support of Garegin.