Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is posting videos on Facebook in which he is speaking about his campaign against the Armenian Apostolic Church. “Now I go to [church] liturgy every Sunday. By the way, people say why I did not go during the previous period. For the same reason: because certain high-ranking church officials, through their actions, drove away from the church thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people like me.

Because it is impossible to keep going and remain constantly in this atmosphere and environment. They talk a lot about sectarianism, but the biggest sectarian is Ktrich Nersisyan [i.e. the birth name of Catholics of All Armenians Karekin II] and his narrow circle. Because what is a sect? It is the distortion of faith, the falsification of faith, the diminishing of faith, the distancing of a person from faith.

They have distanced tens of thousands of people from faith, from the AAC [i.e. the Armenian Apostolic Church]. And people, in their search for a spiritual life, have gone, found themselves in various places where there is, to some extent, some kind of spiritual discourse and spiritual thematic content,” the Armenian premier noted.

And in another video, Pashinyan said: “Armenia is not a theocracy, everyone is free in their choice. A person may believe in God, we must treat that with respect; a person may not believe in God, we must treat that with respect as well.”