Pashinyan and wife accuse clergymen of paedophilia and violating celibacy vows

The Armenian government and the church are facing renewed confrontation following Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement that churches have been turned into ‘storerooms’. Afterwards, Pashinyan, his wife Anna Hakobyan, and other members of the ruling Civil Contract party accused clergymen of breaking their vow of celibacy, as well as paedophilia.

Pashinyan offered his assessment of the church conditions during a cabinet meeting on Thursday.

He claimed that Armenian churches had been turned into ‘storerooms’, where people could see ‘extra tiles, a sack of cement’, and even ‘rusty scraps of rebar’, though he did not specify where he had personally seen such conditions.

Instead, a day after Pashinyan’s remarks, his Deputy Chief of Staff, Taron Chakhoyan, posted photos on Facebook to support the Prime Minister’s claims. The images were taken at the 7th-century Saint Gayane Church, located near the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin in Vagharshapat, and they showed items such as plastic bottles, brooms, buckets, sacks, and other non-religious objects.

After facing criticism from church members, the opposition, and other critics over his remarks, Pashinyan responded with a series of social media posts starting Friday morning, in which he accused members of the clergy of various forms of misconduct.

He began his series of posts by quoting the Bible, referencing the passage where Jesus drove out all who 'sold and bought in the temple,' saying, 'It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer”, but you make it a den of robbers’.

In the consequent posts, Pashinyan accused an unnamed high-ranking clergyman of ‘banging [his] uncle’s wife’. Next, he posed a question of whether episcopates were ‘truly faithful to their vow of celibacy’.

In another post he further noted the consequences when a celibate clergyman is found to have broken his vow, saying that he is stripped of his office, rank, and vestments.

‘So then, which is morally more honest: to resign voluntarily, or to fall into a mental anguish, wondering whether there will be an investigation, whether the truth will come to light?’, Pashinyan wrote.

He also stated all clergymen ‘who have broken their vow of celibacy must step away from spiritual service’.

Aside from Pashinyan’s accusations, members of the ruling Civil Contract party as well as his wife, Anna Hakobyan, sided with him — either supporting his claims or adding further accusations of their own.

Hakobyan, who has been counter-attacking her critics using verbal insults since earlier in May, called clergymen ‘the country’s chief paedophiles’ and ‘the country’s chief maniacal perverts’.

Pashinyan’s wife attacks critics using verbal insults

Anna Hakobyan has been using verbal insults as an ‘equivalent’ response to her critics.

OC MediaArshaluys Barseghyan

Calls to ‘curse’ Pashinyan

Pashinyan’s rhetoric against the church sparked a storm on social media, drawing widespread criticism over his harsh language and the lack of accountability for making serious accusations without providing any evidence. Others speculated that compromising footage that would support his claims might soon be leaked.

Around 15 NGOs ‘strongly condemned’ Pashinyan’s post targeting the alleged mistress of the clergyman, calling on him to remove it and ‘issue a public apology for the discriminatory statement and the disclosure of information about the alleged partner’.

The joint statement said Pashinyan’s contrition would serve ‘as a precedent for other politicians’ and also would prevent ‘continued negative consequences’ of his original posts.

Human rights defender Zara Hovhannisyan also proposed to draft a bill restricting the use of social media by officials, arguing that the enforcement of ethical standards by high-ranking officials is ‘not being properly carried out’.

‘Of course, I am a supporter of an open society, but such “openness” is simply unacceptable; we cannot be shocked every day by inappropriate posts’, Hovhannisyan wrote.

Others suggested the church start to ‘curse’ Pashinyan.

The antipathy between the government and the church’s leadership became more open in the aftermath of Armenia’s defeat in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, when the head of the church joined calls for Pashinyan’s resignation.

In April 2023, Karekin II again reaffirmed his call for Pashinyan to resign, prompting Pashinyan state that ‘if the church wants to carry out political activities, Armenia is a democratic country’.

In another clash between Pashinyan and the church, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan led a major opposition rally and protests against his government in May 2024 — mirroring tactics employed by Pashinyan during the Velvet Revolution — in which he marched from the village of Kirants in Armenia’s northeastern Tavush Province to Yerevan in protest of Armenia’s delimitation process with Azerbaijan.

Critics of the move characterised it as a ‘unilateral handover of territories’ to Azerbaijan.

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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government has had a rocky relationship with the Armenian Apostolic Church.

OC MediaXandie (Alexandra) Kuenning