CATHOLICOSATES, JERUSALEM PATRIARCHATE EXPRESS OUTRAGE OVER VATICAN ROLE IN AZERBAIJANI CONFERENCE
His Holiness Catholicos Aram I has issued a strong statement condemning the Pontifical Gregorian University’s decision to host the April 10 conference titled “Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity.” In a letter addressed to Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, Prefect for Oriental Churches, the Catholicos expressed “deep pain and indignation,” calling the event “an affront to historical truth.”
For its part, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin issued a statement regretting the Vatican’s role in hosting a conference, during which “Azerbaijan’s propaganda apparatus once again sought to deny the Armenian identity of the historical and cultural heritage of Armenia and Artsakh, distorting historical facts with the intent of eventual appropriation.” The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem joined in, criticizing the Vatican for “acting irresponsibly,” saying that with this conference, the Holy See in Rome had enabled “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.”
The event, organized by Azerbaijani state institutions with support from the Vatican, comes less than two years after the ethnic cleansing of 120,000 Armenians from Artsakh and follows decades of destruction of Armenian monuments in territories occupied by the genocidal regime, including some 10,000 khachkars in Nakhichevan in what is considered the worst act of cultural genocide in the 21st century, and on every stretch of Armenian land occupied by the Azerbaijani dictatorship.
In his own reflection, His Eminence Archbishop Anoushavan, Prelate, noted the gravity of the moment.
“God forbid that one day, Azerbaijan’s genocidal regime achieves its goal, erases the name of Armenia, and renames it ‘Western Azerbaijan,’ as it already declares daily,” he said. “It is certain that the falsification of an ancient legacy will be repeated. And then, what will be the stance of the civilized Western world?”