Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem strictly condemns Vatican for  recent international conference titled "Christianity in Azerbaijan:  History and Modernity"

ArmInfo.  Below is a communique from the divan of the Armenian Patriarchate regarding an Azeri-sponsored conference at the Vatican:

The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem strictly condemns the Vatican  for the recent international conference titled "Christianity in  Azerbaijan: History and Modernity", held in Rome under the crude  design of the Azerbaijani government and the regime's  academic-propagandistic front. 

We assert that this baseless conference's glaring exclusion of  Armenian scholars renders it a state- sponsored act of revisionism  and pseudo-historiography that falls so humiliatingly below the  standards of the Vatican that there is no plausible explanation  except financial incentive.

We assert that the Vatican has acted irresponsibly, allowing its  academic platform to be cleverly leveraged to propagate a well-known  and fabricated narrative-one that seeks to erase the historic  presence of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the South Caucasus from  the intellectual memory of world academia. By hosting such an event  without the inclusion of Armenian scholars, the Vatican has allowed  itself to become complicit with the weaponization of history against  an indigenous Christian people whose contributions to global  Christianity, by their own scholarly admission, are indisputable.

We further assert to the Vatican that they have witnessed a  deliberate invention of antiquity: a strategy designed not only to  legitimize present-day territorial claims in the Republic of Armenia,  but to overwrite the presence of older civilizations whose roots run  deep and whose histories are inconvenient to erase. This  academic-propagandistic front of Azerbaijan seeks to construct a  retroactive narrative that lends an unearned depth to their young  state. This is done by overcompensating through revisionism. This  conference is one of the many faces of a political project rooted in  the temporal insecurity of a nation that seeks to obscure the brevity  of its existence by manufacturing heritage and disguising the sacred  legacies of the Armenian Church. We categorically assert that in  place of genuine heritage, the academic front of this regime has  offered the Vatican spectacle. In place of memory, fabrication. In  place of fidelity to historical truths, a calculated arrogance that  treats time as a canvas to be painted over for the sake of  geopolitical posture. It is a historical narrative driven less by  fact than by aspiration. It is an effort to graft the sketches of a  modern statehood onto a past that does not exist. 

The central thesis advanced at such conferences-that Armenian  Christian monuments in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) are the legacy of a  so-called "Caucasian Albanian" civilization-is not only academically  indefensible but also a sinister act of historical negationism. It  constitutes a direct assault on the indigenous epistemology and  dignity owed to an extant people whose sacred traditions have  persisted on the discussed land for millennia.  Here, the result is  not merely academic falsehood, but cultural omission, which  systematically denies the Armenian people of indigeneity and their  rightful place in Christian and civilizational history.

We call upon the Vatican to uphold the integrity of historical truth  and to reject all forms of fabricated heritage and invented tradition  that aim to erase the lived experience of indigenous Christian  communities.  We urge the Vatican to distance itself from such  revisionist endeavors and to reaffirm its commitment to preserving  the authenticity of the Christian tradition as it concerns the Holy  and Apostolic Armenian Orthodox Church.

We declare, as one of the four ancient and extant arms of Armenian  Christianity, that this be a moment of moral clarity for all  scholarship within Christendom: the truth of the Armenian past cannot  be buried beneath lobbied-for and financed revisionist lies. Our  churches, our monasteries, our architecture, our aesthetic, our  cross-stones, our illuminated manuscripts, our liturgy, our  millennial chant, our alphabet, our saints and martyrs, our ancient  cemeteries, our sacred relics, our theological schools, and our  people are living testimony to an Apostolic Armenian tradition that  predates and will outlast the scheming ambition of those who seek to  erase us from physical and intellectual memory.

Divan of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem