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Armenians from the region of Nagorno-Karabakh are “disappointed” and “frustrated” with the Catholic Church over its ties to Azerbaijan and a foundation that has funded hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of restoration projects in the Vatican, a leading activist told The Pillar.
“Azerbaijan has been successful in preventing the Vatican from supporting the protection of our rights and especially our cultural heritage,” said Beglaryan Artak, former human rights ombudsman and chief minister in the Republic of Artsakh.
“We are quite respectful of the Catholic Church, but we are disappointed with its silence regarding cultural heritage and the rights of the Christian people, because we have been ethnically cleansed also because we are Christians,” he told The Pillar.
Beglaryan is also the founder and current president of the Artsakh Union, an organization that advocates for the rights of the former residents of Nagorno-Karabakh who fled or were expelled following the 2023 Azerbaijani invasion of the disputed region. Artsakh is the Armenian term for Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Azerbaijan has fully instrumentalized the Islamic world’s solidarity, even using ISIS terrorists and mercenaries from Syria and Libya in 2020, to fight against us,” he
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