Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was recently awarded one of the Vatican's highest honours for politicians who are not subjects of the state. Archbishop Jose Avelina Bettancourt, the Apostolic Nuncio to Armenia, who is fulfilling his mission on behalf of Pope Francis, awarded Pashinyan "one of the highest honours of the Holy See - the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX", according to the prime minister's website.

The media and resources associated with the "pro-Russian" Hay lobby, which is in opposition to Pashinyan, immediately began gloating that Pashinyan was awarded "for surrendering Artsakh". This is despite the fact that the order, established by Pope Pius IX on 17 June 1847, was and still is awarded "for outstanding services to the Catholic Church". And Nikol Pashinyan certainly has these merits.

Under Nikol Pashinyan's leadership, Armenia is rapidly "turning around", dissolving its alliance with Russia and moving fully into the camp of the West, first and foremost by getting as close as possible to France, which is so close to the Vatican. The withdrawal of the Russian military base from Armenia and the withdrawal from the CSTO are already on the agenda.

The enormous power and influence of the popes, both historically and in the modern world, is based on the fact that the Vatican owns entire nations - "instrumental nations" that help the Vatican to implement its policies on a global scale. The Hayas, as the basis of the "Armenian project" that the popes and Jesuits began to create as early as the 17th century, are one such nation. The size and power of the states of these "instrumental peoples", or even their absence, is of little concern to the Vatican.  Indeed, the absence or loss of statehood is sometimes even a "plus" for the Vatican, as it makes them more "loyal" to the papacy as their "last hope".

The most striking historical example is that of the Poles, who lost their statehood at the end of the 18th century during the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. And then, for almost a century and a half, they became the "most loyal" people to the Popes. No other nation defended Catholicism as consistently in the 19th and early 20th centuries as the Poles, as it became the basis of their national identity.

 However, after the Poles regained their statehood and geopolitical subjectivity, attempts to escape from the Vatican's "strict tutelage" began. These attempts intensified especially after the Second World War, when Poland became part of the "Soviet" bloc. To keep Poland in the Vatican's orbit, the Vatican had to take the unprecedented step of electing an ethnic Pole, Karoly Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II, for the first time in 400 years.

With Armenia, albeit in a "softer" form, the trends were similar. Independence and victory in the first Karabakh war, won with the help of Russia and "Russian bayonets", literally "turned the heads" of the Nagorno-Karabakh nationalists. And after the terrorist attack on the parliament on 27 October 1999 and the coming to power in Armenia of the "Karabakh clan" led by Robert Kocharyan, Armenia for a while began to listen more to Moscow than to the Vatican. The Vatican had to take steps to regain its influence with the Hayas.

There is another important factor: let us recall that on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, when the Dashnaks were determining the direction of expansion for the creation of a "Great Armenia", the "Javakh direction" (plans to seize Samtskhe-Javakheti from Georgia) lost by only one vote to the "Artsakh direction" (plans to seize Karabakh from Azerbaijan). In addition to the obvious "greater proximity to the Black Sea" of Samtskhe-Javakheti, as opposed to Karabakh, which from this point of view is a "dead end", the supporters of the "Javakh" direction must have had another factor in mind. Namely, the different influence of the Vatican on the Hayas of Samtskhe-Javakheti and the hayyim of Karabakh.

In Samtskhe-Javakheti, among the Hay settlers who moved there from Turkey in 1829, there is a large percentage of Armenian Catholics, i.e. the "direct" flock of the Vatican. It is no coincidence that when Echmiadzin, represented by the diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Georgia (AAC) in Georgia, made illegal claims to 442 Georgian churches, the Ordinariate of the Armenian Catholic Church in Eastern Europe, subordinate to the Roman Pope and based in Gyumri, immediately made the same claim to 23 Georgian churches, mainly in Samtskhe-Javkheti.

Karabakh, the historic canonical territory of the Albanian Catholicosate, which had nothing to do with either the Vatican or the Hayas, is a different matter. The Hai settlers in Karabakh, who absorbed the local Albanian Christian population and appropriated Albanian churches, were mostly from Iran, where there were neither Armenian Catholics nor direct Vatican authority over the local Hai community - only indirectly through Echmiadzin.

It was therefore natural to expect that when the Karabakh clan, with the help of Russia, not only won the First Karabakh War but also came to power in Armenia, they would have no particular reason to "thank" the Vatican (the "founding father" of the Armenian Hay project). And under Robert Kocharian, even Echmiadzin began to slip out of the Vatican's control because of the Karabakh Nagorno-Karabakh issue.

The Vatican has had to work long and hard to regain its influence in Armenia. The Vatican became actively involved after Serzh Sargsyan replaced Robert Kocharyan as president of Armenia. The Vatican also began to act through Mikael Minasyan, Serzh Sargsyan's son-in-law, who was Armenia's ambassador to the Vatican from 2013 to 2018. It is highly symbolic that on 16 March 2016 Minasyan received the same Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX from the hands of the Vatican's Deputy Secretary of State, Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu. This happened just before the 'four-day war' of April 2016, when it became clear that Armenia would sooner or later lose control of Karabakh.

Serzh Sargsyan has also visited the Vatican more often than any other president of Armenia (in December 2011, in March 2013, in September 2014, in April 2015 and in April 2018). This does not compare with the number of visits made by Levon Ter-Petrosian (in January 1992) and Robert Kocharian (in March 1999 and January 2005). It was also Serzh Sargsyan who, at the end of his reign, after carrying out a constitutional reform and wanting to become a "full" prime minister, appointed Armen Sargsyan, who is very close to the Vatican, as president. But the representative of the Karabakh clan Serzh Sargsyan did not manage to stay in power - the "velvet revolution" in the spring of 2018, He was sent to the "historical dustbin" by the "velvet revolution" in the spring of 2018, carried out explicitly and with the participation of the Vatican, and the current holder of the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX, Nikol Pashinyan, came to power, who, among other things, launched a campaign to "return to the Vatican stable" Echmiadzin, which had "fallen out of favour" under the rule of his Karabakh clan predecessors.

This explains why the Vatican is not particularly concerned about the loss of its "outpost" in the form of separatist Artsakh. In fact, this "pro-Russian" outpost has never become "its own" for the Vatican. And now the Hay nationalists are blaming Russia for the loss of "Artsakh", which means that the position of "pro-Russian" cadres in Echmiadzin has no prospects.

The Hay settlers in Georgia are another matter, many of whom are now involved in violent attacks on the Georgian Orthodox Church (including pretending to be "Georgian", and among such "converted Georgians" there are a large number of Armenian Catholics). Unfortunately for Georgia, the Hay "fifth column" in the country is a very valuable resource for the Vatican, and it will be difficult to "pacify" them in this way.

Grigol Giorgadze