ArmInfo. Before blaming the Vatican, it is necessary to recall who recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of the territory of Azerbaijan. This is what candidate of historical sciences Migran Hakobyan writes in his article on his Facebook account.
According to him, when there was a state in Armenia, there were also external forces, there were allies, systems were in place, defenders of truth and justice were active, firmly standing on the side of this state. "There was respect for the Armenian state, faith, history, pain and suffering, and in some places there was a clear sympathy, there was visible and invisible support. When the Armenians had a state, they preserved their homeland, and the world respected this fact, this effort. When there was a state, the Vatican for the first time in history recognized the Armenian Apostolic Church as an equal sister structure, organized a liturgy in St. Peter's Basilica in memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, proclaimed Gregory of Narek as the Patriarch of the Ecumenical Roman Church and erected a statue of Narek in the courtyard of the Vatican. The Holy See opened the Vatican Secret Archives, publishing materials on the Armenian Genocide in 7 volumes. All this did not fall from the sky. All this existed because the Armenians had a state and statesmen whose long and persistent diplomatic work led to something that became a true source of pride as both at home and abroad. But that, as they say, was in a past life. In 2018, Armenians, shouting "It stinks" and "Everything will be fine," rejected the state and brought uneducated street kids to power. Let's not dwell on the tragic results of 7 years of lack of statehood, everything is clear anyway. Let's just record that Nikol (the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia - ed.) and his Minister of Foreign Affairs (Ararat Mirzoyan - ed.), together with the trash called "ambassadors," have brought the situation to the point that the state of Azerbaijan, together with one of the theological universities of the Vatican, is organizing an "international conference of ethnologists" in the Vatican itself, where it should be "scientifically presented" that what was created in Artsakh over the millennia is not the heritage of Armenians, but of "Caucasian Albanians," the historian noted.
In this vein, according to him, it is quite natural that Azerbaijan does not represent Gandzasar, Amaras and Dadivank as Armenian cultural monuments. "In essence, the Azerbaijani state, trying to appropriate the Armenian heritage, is solving its own problem, and before blaming the Vatican, let's record who exactly was the first in history to recognize Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, thereby declaring to the world that the Armenian state is abandoning not only its homeland, but also its history, heritage and truth. Because if Karabakh is Azerbaijan, then Gandzasar is Albania. Therefore, the Vatican, like any other international player, has the right to spit on Nikol, who has abandoned his dignity. Armenians have no right to put up with the lack of statehood, humiliation, betrayal, and even more so, to demand respect and compassion from others. Another matter is how the Vatican treats a state that destroyed a Christian field of khachkars, but this is a topic for another conversation. When Voltaire was told: "Life is difficult," he always answered: "Compared to what?" This "shameful affair" of the Vatican and Azerbaijan is another episode of state comparisons and non-states, state people and street scum. And if Armenians expect respect, compassion and support from the world, they must first respect themselves, find the strength in themselves and throw the non-state and its embodiment - the Nicolist regime - into the dustbin of history," wrote Mihran Hakobyan, who published as a postscript a video in which many years ago the Armenian Ambassador to the Holy See, leaving his post, talks about the work of Armenian diplomacy in the Vatican. "Who we were, and who we have become, where we were, and where we have come," the historian summed up.