The Aragatsotn Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church condemned the performance of the "liturgy" by a defrocked clergyman in the Church of St. George.

ArmInfo. The Aragatsotn Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) condemned the "liturgy" held in the Church of St. George in the village of Garnahovit in the Talin region by defrocked clergyman Armen Arakelyan (formerly Father Koryun - ed.).

The statement from the Aragatsotn Diocese recalls that this man once headed the well-known "New Armenia, New Patriarch" movement (an initiative that emerged in the summer of 2018, immediately after the "velvet revolution," when Nikol Pashinyan came to power - ed.). "The Church is not a place for satisfying personal ambitions, making arbitrary decisions, or acting to please one's own desires. "A defrocked clergyman is deprived of the ecclesiastical right to perform priestly services and exercise priestly rights," the statement on the Facebook page reads.

The diocese emphasized that a "liturgy" celebrated by a defrocked person cannot be considered a canonical liturgy celebrated by the Church. In this regard, it notes that such an action not only violates ecclesiastical order but also misleads believers, trampling on and undermining their religious and spiritual life. "We demand that defrocked former clergy refrain from desecrating churches and trampling on the religious rights of believing children." "We call on our spiritual children to be vigilant and refrain from participating in such illegal and uncanonical events," the Aragatsotn Diocese concluded.

It should be noted that in 2018, after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to power, an open opposition movement against the Catholicos also emerged within the country. During the mass protests of 2018, when tens of thousands of people across the country demanded a change in government, a group of clergy and believers decided that the time had come for reform within the Church. Uniting in the "New Armenia - New Patriarch" movement, they demanded the resignation of the Catholicos and several bishops and the election of a new leader. The traditionalist monk Father Koryun (now Armen Arakelyan - ed.) became the spiritual leader of the movement. Following this, the Catholicos defrocked Father Koryun "for behavior unbecoming of a clergyman and anti-canonical activity" and removed him from the monastery's management. A number of bishops publicly supported the decision.