Armenian Archbishop Decries International ‘Indifference’ to His People’s Plight
Solène Tadié | National Catholic Register | October 3, 2025
Archbishop Vrtanes Abrahamyan of Artsakh said the Christian world is particularly silent towards the world’s oldest Christian nation.
YEREVAN, Armenia — Archbishop Vrtanes Abrahamyan has become one of the most visible witnesses of the ordeal of the Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Displaced in 2023 along with the community he served, and now a refugee in Yerevan, his testimony reveals the lingering scars of a conflict that, for his people, remains unresolved.
Two years have passed since Azerbaijan’s latest attack on Nagorno-Karabakh — a disputed enclave also known as Artsakh in the South Caucasus and historically populated by Armenians — which ended with Azerbaijan regaining full control of the territory.
The dispute had flared repeatedly since the early 1990s, when the Armenian population declared its independence and sought unity with Armenia. A new war in 2020 killed more than 7,000 and forced tens of thousands from their homes.
In 2023, a months-long blockade of the Lachin corridor — the only road linking the enclave to Armenia — was followed by a swift offensive that emptied Nagorno-Karabakh of its Armenian residents. Around 120,000 people fled in less than a week, an exodus widely described as ethnic cleansing.
For Archbishop Abrahamyan, primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church for the Diocese of Artsakh since 2021, the peace treaty recently signed in Washington only deepened his people’s sense of injustice, dampening their hope of return to their historic land.
A People Torn From Their Roots
In an interview with the Register during a trip Sept. 21-25 promoted by the U.S. advocacy organization Save Armenia, he recalled, his face tense and his eyes moist with emotion, the moment when his entire community was forced to abandon their homes.
“One day, troops came suddenly and drove us out from our ancestral land, our connections, our heart,” the archbishop said. “And an entire people was displaced.”
Heritage Erasure and Hope of Return
Today, Armenia is engaged in a peace process with Azerbaijan that would definitively renounce Artsakh. Archbishop Abrahamyan looks with deep suspicion at this agreement brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump in August 2025. While it promises Armenia security guarantees and economic opportunities — and may temporarily ease the pressure on a country in a precarious position — it also cements Azerbaijan’s gains and rules out any possibility of return for the communities of Artsakh.
For the archbishop, it represents a deal imposed under pressure, detached from the reality of his people’s suffering.