The Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin welcomes the bishops’ call to “respect the patriarchal order of the Church,” as well as their expressed “loyalty to the Church’s order and canons, traditions, and soldiery brotherhood,” once again urging them to demonstrate this awareness and return to the canonical domain, thereby practically proving the “unreserved commitment to Holy Etchmiadzin.” This was reported by the Information System of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin in response to Armenian News-NEWS.am’s inquiry about how the Mother See comments on the new statement by the 10 bishops and archbishops—who demand that Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II step down—regarding the postponement of the Bishops' Synod of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

“Certainly, it is regrettable that the relations between the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and the Supreme Patriarch of the Armenians are being maintained by the ten bishops solely through statements of their own preference, while addressing the ‘issues’ presented continues not within church bodies, not in meetings with the Supreme Patriarch of the Armenians, but in completely different platforms, with completely other, well-known objectives.

It should be recorded that the Mother See has exhaustively provided the justifications for the postponement of the Bishops' Synod, circumstances under the overwhelming influence of which the authors of the most recent known statements, the Most Reverend Fathers, are clearly also situated.

The Mother See, the Catholicos of All Armenians have never avoided constructive discussion on any intra-church issue; on the contrary, the aforementioned bishops have always had the opportunity to become a participant in the work of various synodal bodies and even to vote in the process of making important decisions in the life of the Church.

Everyone is also well aware of the approaches of the Armenian Church, honed by our centuries-old national history, regarding the importance and building of healthy church-state relations for the benefit of the nation, no matter how much attempts are made today to distort this reality,” adds the comment of the Information System of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin.