It’s inconvenient to open patriarchates on every 50km in Georgia - Van Baiburd

Georgia is a small country, and opening patriarchates in every region would hardly be reasonable, the advisor to the Georgian president on minority issues has said.

“Georgia is a small country, and I don’t know how reasonable it would be to open [an Armenian] patriarchate in every 50 km” Van Baiburd told Tert.am.

Baiburd’s statement comes as a comment to a recent call by Samtskhe-Javakheti-based NGOs that demanded that the Armenian community have a patriarchate in Samtskhe-Javakheti.

Currently, the Armenian Patriarchate in Georgia is situated in the capital Tbilisi.

Artak Gabrielyan and Valeri Arabyan, board members of Samtskhe-Javakheti-based NGOs said in a press conference on Friday that the issue of having a separate patriarchate there was raised since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the successive Georgian and Armenian authorities have ignored it.

Further, Van Baiburd said that the Armenian churches are currently under the protection of the Georgian state.

In his words during the recent seven years alone 38 Armenian churches have been built in Georgia and dozens renovated.

He also said that five churches are disputed by the Georgian state, adding that the Surb Gevorg Mughnetsots Church had also been included in the list of the disputed churches before it collapsed.

However, according to him, the renovation plan of the church is already ready, and Armenia and Georgian ministries of culture are taking relevant steps for the renovation of the church.