Intervention in Renovation of Mother Cathedral Ordered Directly by Pashinyan: Armen Ashotyan

Armen Ashotyan, the vice president of the Republican Party of Armenia, stated on his Facebook page: "The order to obstruct the renovation of the Mother Cathedral in Etchmiadzin has been given personally by Pashinyan. For more than two years now, the renovation works of the Mother Cathedral have not been completed. They have been paralyzed due to the government’s actions. This ancient Christian mother cathedral, which is one of the few still standing and functioning in the world, has not fully opened its doors to believers, as the independent government of Armenia has delayed recognizing the renovation works as charitable for a long time. I raised concerns about this issue at the beginning of the year. By the way, even though the head of this commission is the Armenian government’s Chief of Staff Tigran Avinyan, the order to impede the renovation of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral has been given directly by Pashinyan. In contrast, several projects financed by various Western foundations have been recognized as charitable and have been exempted from taxes with remarkable efficiency. I reiterate, it was even hard to imagine in our wildest dreams that the first Christian state would one day have a government whose actions would harm the spiritual heart of the first Christian people. And here we are today, under the godless and anti-Christian Prime Minister of the Third Republic, who does not grant the church the privileges that were even given to the Persian kings, Russian emperors, and Soviet bureaucrats. How are you different from the Turks?"