“The relations between the state and the church, disregarding a number of nuances, are as they should be: the state should not interfere in the affairs of the church, and the church - in the affairs of the state.” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said this at a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community in Switzerland.

“In 2018, when the revolution took place, many people demanded from me that the Armenian Apostolic Church should have a new Catholicos. I publicly stated that it is not the concern of the people, of the government, who will be the Catholicos. First of all, he is the Catholicos of All Armenians, not the Catholicos of the RA. Although everyone suspected that we provoked these manifestations, but it did not correspond to reality. The reality was that if we had organized, we would have achieved the result very quickly in 2018,” Nikol Pashinyan said.

Commenting on the issue of problems between the government and the church, he emphasized that in his opinion the church should function transparently.

“Everyone demands transparency from the government, to say where they went, what they ate, with whom they ate, how they breathed. Not only us, but our friends, classmates, even those who say hello to us once in their lives should be transparent. Then why shouldn't the church be transparent?

Secondly, we have legislation. We say: when you sell something, you must give a KKM receipt. And if you sell candles, why shouldn't you give a KKM receipt? They say, do you want to tax the church? We want to have tax legislation in Armenia. But we are obliged to return all the tax formed from the church, the church will have 0 kopecks left in the budget. If it turns out that additional funding is required for the activities of the church in Armenia, we will think about it too,” Pashinyan said.