Will government confiscate Mother See`s property?

ArmInfo.  Suren Tovmasyan, head of the Armenian Cadastre Committee, answered the question of whether the Armenian government plans to seize property from Holy Etchmiadzin.

"The government's agenda includes conducting studies of all property  privatized in the Republic of Armenia in violation of procedures. You  are already seeing this today in the context of property restitution  with the hashtag #ZernyshkoKZernyshko (Prime Minister Pashinyan  periodically posts on social media with this hashtag, discussing  illegally privatized property returned to the state by court  decisions - ed.)," he said on October 28 in a conversation with  journalists in parliament.

According to him, the authorities must fill the legislative gap  created in the past, after which decisions will be made on a  case-by-case basis. Today, the Armenian Apostolic Church owns  approximately 600-700 units of real estate, he noted. Today, Suren  Tovmasyan points out that after the collapse of the USSR, the land  was exclusively owned by the Republic of Armenia. "The Armenian  government and the National Assembly decided how to distribute the  land, including the property in Hovhannavank. It was through these  decisions that this property was transferred to the Armenian  Apostolic Church," he said.

However, the head of the Cadastre did not recall in detail who  currently owns the land and property in Hovhannavank-the government  or the Church-and whether the transfer was by ownership or gratuitous  use. Let us recall that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, addressing  the controversy surrounding the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC) on  October 22 in the National Assembly, and in particular the former  spiritual pastor of Hovhannavank, Father Aram, canonized by Karekin  II and now officially a layman under the name Stepan Asatryan,  stated: "If I understand correctly, Hovhannavank, like many other  monuments, is owned by the state, while a number of churches have  been transferred to the AAC for free use. I believe that where there  is no spiritual life, but intrigues, conspiracies, and groups of  false priests or false elders operate, we can, and there are all the  moral and legal grounds for this, return these monuments to society  and support Father Aram and priests like him in every possible way,  so that they can revive genuine spiritual life in Armenia."

Pashinyan's assertion about Hovhannavank was examined by Hetq, which  declared it baseless, "meaning he doesn't know exactly who owns  Hovhannavank, but without verifying the facts, he continued the topic  and spoke of confiscating monuments from the Mother See on moral and  legal grounds."

"The fact is that Hovhannavank, like many churches and monasteries,  belongs to the Mother See by right of ownership. Moreover, on  February 17, 2005, the government of Andranik Margaryan decided to  alienate, by right of gratuitous ownership, the land plots occupied  by monasteries and churches belonging to the latter and necessary for  their maintenance, which had previously been transferred to the  Mother See by right of gratuitous use, to the Armenian Apostolic  Church." The Armenian Apostolic Church has documents confirming this:  a certificate of ownership, or, as Pashinyan put it, a "cadastral  document." According to a document obtained by Hetq from the  Cadastral Committee, the religious organization, the Armenian  Apostolic Holy Church, owns both the Hovhannavank land plot and the  buildings and structures erected on it. This right of the Armenian  Apostolic Holy Church was registered in the Cadastre more than 20  years ago, on March 25, 2005.

By this decision, the Executive Authority of the Mother See  expropriated the lands occupied by 21 churches and monasteries  belonging to it in the Aragatsotn region, a total of 86,770 square  meters or 8.67 hectares. In total, in 2005, the government  gratuitously expropriated the lands of 172 monasteries and churches  in Yerevan and 10 regions to the Armenian Apostolic Church; Another 6  land plots were subject to clarification and subsequent alienation.

The Armenian Apostolic Church, as the legal owner of the lands and  buildings of Hovhannavank and other monasteries and churches, has  rights to them guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of  Armenia, Hetq writes, recalling that, according to Article 60 of the  RA Constitution: "Everyone has the right to own, use, and dispose of,  at their own discretion, property acquired legally." In other words,  everything that the deposed Stepan Asatryan is doing today, with the  participation of his official and unofficial supporters, is being  carried out on territory that belongs to the Mother See by right of  ownership.