Amid the homes and cobblestoned streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi’s old town, two stone churches stand side by side, sharing a snow-covered courtyard.
One, the Georgian Orthodox Church of Jvaris Mama, is alive with parishioners and lit candles. Its neighbor, the Norashen Church, sits lonely and locked.
Unused for nearly seven decades, the Norashen Church is at the heart of a long-running dispute between the Armenian Apostolic and the Georgian Orthodox churches.
PHOTO: AFP
The dispute has flared again in recent weeks, raising ethnic tensions in Georgia as it is still recovering from an August war with Russia over the South Ossetia region, where ethnic Ossetian separatists broke from Georgian control in the early 1990s.
Ownership disputes between the two churches are common, but the Norashen Church has come to symbolize what some in the local Armenian community say is the “Georgianization” of traditionally Armenian churches.
Armenian experts say the Norashen Church was built in the 15th century for the local Armenian community and continued to operate until it was shut down during the Soviet Union’s anti-religion drive in the 1930s.
The Georgian church says there is no conclusive evidence that Norashen was Armenian and that its origins are open to debate. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ownership of the church fell to the Georgian government and the dispute has yet to be resolved.
The latest flare-up occurred when local Armenians claimed that the priest of the Georgian church next to Norashen, Father Tariel Sikinchelashvili, tried to remove Armenian tombstones from its graveyard.
Alexander Ohanian, the head of the Armenian Cooperation Center of Georgia, said that in November he saw a bulldozer working in the churchyard and that two Armenian tombstones had been removed.
Local Armenians gathered in the yard and confronted Father Tariel, accusing him of seeking to remove evidence that the church is Armenian. The tombstones were later returned, but Ohanian said local Armenians don’t believe their removal was an accident.
“It is too naive to think that he acted alone, without permission from his superiors,” Ohanian said.
A senior Armenian priest in Tbilisi, Father Narek Kushian, said the Georgian church has been trying to convert the building since 1989.
“Father Tariel is trying to seize the church and add Orthodox attributes to raise questions about its origin,” Kushian said. “The inscription on the cupola of the church was erased by him and the main attributes showing this church is Armenian, such as the altar, have also been destroyed.”
Approached in his church, Father Tariel refused to comment.
“I am just too tired of it all,” he said. “I’ve done as much as I can and all I can do now is pray.”
A spokesman for the Georgian Orthodox Church, Davit Sharashenidze, said a commission is to resolve ownership disputes.
“We can’t say unambiguously that it is an Armenian church, as there is also evidence backing opposite claims,” he said. “The Georgian side has similar claims regarding Georgian churches in Armenia and these issues need study and research by scientists.”
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS