Nikol Pashinian once again shows, with his latest statements against Catholicos Karekin II, that he does not distinguish — or does not wish to distinguish — between the office he holds and the nation he claims to represent. Accusing the primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church of not believing in God, of lacking spiritual life, and of having betrayed his covenant before the people is not political criticism: it is an excess that no head of government should permit himself, and one that, as director of this newspaper, I feel obliged to point out clearly.

The Armenian Apostolic Church is not just another state body, subject to the judgment of whoever happens to govern. It is, together with the language, the pillar that sustained Armenians through centuries without a state of their own, through genocide, and through the dispersion that made us a diaspora people. For millions of Armenians who never set foot in Yerevan but who do attend parish, school, and community life built around the Church, attacking the spiritual legitimacy of the Catholicos from the parliamentary podium is attacking one of the few symbols that still unite us across borders, generations, and political factions.

There is something even more serious at stake. When a sitting prime minister publicly questions the faith of his country's highest religious authority, what he displays to the world is not an institutional reform underway: it is a fractured nation, unable to resolve its differences without turning them into a spectacle. That image draws no distinction between government and Church in anyone's eyes: it damages the reputation of Armenians as a people, precisely when Armenia most needs to present itself as a cohesive, reliable nation to its international partners and to its own diaspora.

Pashinian appears to have convinced himself that circumstantially administering the state also grants him authority over the nation's religious conscience. He is mistaken, and gravely so. A prime minister is a person who has been entrusted, for a set period, with managing part of a country's government; he is not the owner of his people's faith, not their moral arbiter, and certainly has no right to claim the spiritual representation of an entire nation. Confusing administrative power with authority over the sacred is, at best, arrogance; at worst, a cynical political calculation that uses the Church as an easy target to consolidate a domestic narrative.

And yet, a far simpler path existed — and still exists — that Pashinian chose not to take. When a person is not comfortable with their religious leader, or even with the highest authority of their Church, they do not summon parliament or resort to an official podium: they seek out another parish, another priest, another spiritual guide who allows them to keep living their faith in peace. That is precisely the freedom that religious life offers to any believer.

Pashinian, however, did not exercise that freedom as an ordinary citizen: he used the power of the state to try to impose on an entire nation his own crisis of conscience with the church hierarchy, as though his personal discomfort should become, by decree of his office, a problem for all Armenians.

The damage caused by these statements does not stay confined to Pashinian's office, nor does it end when his term ends. It outlives his tenure and falls upon all Armenians, at home and abroad, for far longer than he will remain in power. There may indeed be legitimate questions of conduct and transparency within the church hierarchy that deserve serious discussion. But the personal, public disparagement of the Church's primate resolves none of them: it only deepens a wound that Armenian identity — already battered by war and the forced displacement from Artsakh — cannot afford to keep paying for the vanity of one man.

Beyond the intentions of each actor — which are not ours to judge — the objective result of this conflict is a more divided Armenia, with its principal identity-bearing institution discredited and weakened. And a divided Armenia is, quite simply, a more vulnerable Armenia before those who have historically disputed its territory, its memory, and its place in the region. That, in the end, is the real cost of mistaking a temporary office for the eternal representation of a people.