Has Aram Ateshian appropriated a painting by Aivazovsky? (video)
Members of an NGO calling itself “We call for punishment for profane Aram Ateshian” spend one day to find out whether Archbishop Aram Ateshian, General Vicar of the Armenian Patriarch in Turkey was in Armenia or not. “We were able to find out that the Catholicos of All Armenians (Karekin II) is not in Armenia, while Ateshian had arrived in Armenia with two other clergymen. The reason of the visit was that one of them had never been to Armenia before,” Sargis Hatspanyan, an expert-analyst in regional affairs, said today. He says they found it meaningless to take people to Etchmiadzin and stage an action there in the absence of the Catholicos. The initiative has decided to apply to all dioceses asking their opinion about Ateshian who spoke against the canonization of the Genocide victims. The acting Armenian patriarch of Istanbul, Archbishop Aram Ateshian, wrote a letter to Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan shortly after the German Bundestag overwhelmingly passed a resolution recognizing the 1915 Armenian genocide. In the letter sent on behalf of his community, Ateshian said that German lawmakers had ‘no right’ to pass judgment on the Armenian massacres. He also claimed that Armenians are being exploited by imperialist forces. “The Church takes an ostrich approach in such matters,” Sargis Hatspanyan stressed. Gohar Arshakyan, another member of the initiative, added that Ateshian displays inaction, at the same time offering liturgy in Turkish and refusing to baptize Armenians who were Islamized by force. Sargis Hatspanyan also expressed his concerns that Ateshian had probably appropriated one of the six paintings by Aivazovsky that decorated the entrance of the Patriarchate.
