Tbilisi, March 30, 2026
Holy Trinity Sameba Cathedral in Tbilisi. Photo: responsibletravel.com
Shalva Papuashvili, speaker of the Georgian Parliament, has said that a 22-year campaign to discredit the Georgian Orthodox Church is tantamount to a religious war aimed at supplanting the spiritual foundation of the Georgian nation, reports 1tv.ge.
Papuashvili made the remarks to journalists in the aftermath of the repose of His Holiness Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II, who led the Georgian Orthodox Church for 48 years and was widely regarded as the most beloved and trusted figure in Georgian public life. He served as personal godfather to more than 50,000 Georgian children. The Patriarch reposed on March 17.
The speaker cited a 2004 interview in which the Patriarch had already warned that an anti-Church campaign was underway, which he believed had been orchestrated from abroad. Papuashvili said the goal of the campaign has been to undermine the Church—the institution holding the greatest authority in Georgian society—in order to replace it with a foreign ideology.
Papuashvili also drew a connection between the campaign and what he described as efforts by Brussels officials and certain European leaders to turn the European Union into a kind of pseudo-religion, saying its local adherents in Georgia exhibit fundamentalist behavior in their attachment to EU institutions.
He stated that organizations involved in discrediting the Church had received direct foreign funding, citing in particular funding from France received by Sovlab, and noting that a body calling itself the Tolerance Centre, financed by the EU and other foreign sources, had no actual connection to the Public Defender’s Office despite presenting itself as affiliated with that institution.
The Speaker said that despite the funds directed against the Georgian Church and people, the effort has come to nothing. He pointed to the more than one and a half million people who came to the Holy Trinity Sameba Cathedral to pay their last respects to Pat. Ilia as evidence of where Georgian society stands.
Follow OrthoChristian on Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, MeWe and Gab!
