Walking through the grounds of Armenia’s most sacred church, 37-year-old worshipper Nara Sargsyan spoke in hushed tones as she criticised her government’s attacks on the clergy.
“I don’t support their position on the church. I don’t support it at all,” she told AFP, as priests walked around the neatly-cut grass of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral behind her.
For months, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has called for the removal of the church’s leader, Catholicos Karekin II – one of his most prominent critics – alleging that he fathered a child against his vow of celibacy.
Security forces in the South Caucasus country last year detained more than a dozen clergymen, including influential Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, as well as billionaire opposition figure Samvel Karapetyan, accusing some of them of plotting to overthrow Pashinyan – charges they reject.
The arrests have rattled Armenia, a deeply Christian nation of three million people bordering Iran and Turkey, and put…
