Orthodox believers admire icons at the former Catholic Church in Gori. The Orthodox Church removed the interior's Catholic trappings. [Eka Chitanava/Georgika]

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Religious minorities make claim to old houses of worship

By Eka Chitanava in Gori and Tbilisi -- 30/11/09

Tbilisi is a melting pot, but the nation's religious minorities want old houses of worship back.

Multicultural Georgia still has far to go in extending tolerance to religious minorities.

That's the conclusion of a report issued by Georgia's ombudsman in November, "The State of Human Rights in Georgia – 1st Half of 2009". The country does not sufficiently respect the rights of religious minorities, according to the report.

Catholic, Armenian, Apostolic and Muslim communities, together with some smaller denominations, make up 16% of the population. Officially, however, most of them do not exist.

Georgia does not give them the option of registering as religious organizations.  Despite the fact that Orthodox Church in Georgia is not recognized as an official state religion, it carries a powerful punch.

Property matters

One significant problem that religious minorities face under this official exclusion is that they have been unable to recover houses of worship that they lost after the 1917 Soviet takeover.

After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the Georgian Orthodox Church alone regained status as an officially recognized faith. Under the terms of an agreement in October 2002, all ecclesiastical buildings, ruins and lands confiscated after 1917 became the property of the Orthodox Church. No other denominations had the right to reclaim old property.

The government decided not to adopt a law on religion after the 2003 Rose Revolution. Instead, it drew up contracts to let religious denominations register as limited liability companies (LLCs).

The Catholic, Armenian Apostolic and Muslim communities refused to register as LLCs, saying to do so would detract from their religious status.

Consequently, they still struggle with property rights.

The Catholic Church is trying to regain five churches in Batumi, Kutaisi, Gori, Akhaltsikhe and Adigeni. The Muslim community is quietly eyeing two former mosques in the mountainous Adjara region, and the Armenian Apostolic Church is claiming five churches in Tbilisi and one in Akhaltsikhe.

All three denominations say the houses of worship in question belonged to them before the Soviet crackdown on religion.

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Catholics worship in an improvised chapel on Ninoshvili Street in Gori. [Eka Chitanava/ Georgika]

Catholics

The chanting of around 30 Catholics suffuses a small room in a modest apartment that has been converted into a place of worship. It is the one place in Gori where Catholics can celebrate mass.

Twenty-nine-year old Nato Alaverdashvili is one of the few Catholics still clinging to ancestral traditions. She embraced the faith under the influence of her grandmother from the Adigeni region, which contains a concentration of the country's Catholics.

Alaverdashvili's sisters and father are Orthodox, but the family has not suffered any religious discord.

She comes almost every day to this converted apartment to celebrate mass.

A few meters away, Orthodox worshippers throng to the former Catholic Church. At the entrance, beggars ask for money and bless visitors for coming.

Asked whether the church is Catholic, one beggar snaps, "Once upon a time it was! But now it belongs to us!"

Alaverdashvili shrugs. Maybe it's unfair to snatch back the building after all the reconstruction work the Orthodox did, she says, but the complete transformation of the interior hurts her feelings.

"There was a fresco of Saint Mary here," she said pointing to a spot near the altar. "I have no idea why it was removed, because even the communists did not touch it."

"It is a bigger problem than five disputed churches," says Father Irakli Chelidze, a Catholic priest who took his vows four years ago. Expressing concern about the potential for domination by the Orthodox faith, he asked, "Do we need to have an Orthodox Iran in a few years?"

Armenians

Armenian students and clergy demonstrated outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan November 24th, demanding that the Georgian government grant legal status to the Armenian Apostolic Church in Georgia, Armenian news agencies reported.

Some Yerevan residents reacted with outrage to the November 19th collapse of the abandoned Armenian Church of St. George in Tbilisi. Georgia's culture ministry promised to start reconstruction immediately.

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Armenians lament the condition of their churches in Georgia. Above, the former Norashen church in Tbilisi has become a book warehouse. [Temo Bardzimashvili/Georgika]

Armenian churches in Tbilisi are in critical condition, says Father Narek, pastor of the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of St. George in Tbilisi.

"If they are not reconstructed, they might tumble down, he says, "However, Armenians do not have the right to touch them, as they cannot prove they own the property," he said.

"We do not seek anything else, but if we regain these churches, we will rebuild them by ourselves," Father Narek says.

One of these churches, Norashen, which stands in the heart of Tbilisi, has been a book warehouse since the church seizures of the Soviet era. For more than 15 years, the Georgian and Armenian churches have been disputing ownership of the building.

Tensions erupted a year ago when Georgian Orthodox priest Tariel Sikinchilashvili initiated massive construction on the Norashen grounds. Armenians accused Sikinchilashvili of destroying Armenian symbols inside the church and defiling the graves of noted Armenians.

Sikinchilashvili hired a crew of laborers who moved several tombstones, including that of Mantashev, an Armenian philanthropist, although they did not move the graves. He was just cleaning up the churchyard, the priest said. "They are making unreasonable accusations against me," he claimed.

Norashen is still not hosting any religious services, since both sides of the controversy remain unwilling to negotiate.

The government is trying to avoid conflict with the Georgian Orthodox patriarchate, while the patriarchate is shifting responsibility to the government, said Father Narek. "In this case we are lost!" Father Narek said.

The Armenian Church has a 1,500-year history in Georgia. Such a long history should entitle it to some privilege compared to newer denominations, said Father Narek.

Muslims

Muslims are less concerned about property restitution. They have never had problems with the government, said Imam Iasin Aliev. They do not push hard about the two mosques in Adjara, preferring to stay friendly with the authorities.

Imam Iasin did have one complaint, recalling how Orthodox priest David Isakadze prevented him from rebuilding an old mosque in Talaveri, near a concentrated population of ethnic Azeris.

The Muslim community lacked the construction permit it needed from the mayor's office, national ombudsman Giorgi Tughushi said. "We will help it defend its rights," he added.

Looking for answers

Lela Jejelidze, co-ordinator of the Interreligious Relations Centre at the patriarchate, calls it a legislative vacuum. "It is the government's responsibility," she said. "Especially since the patriarchate does not oppose passage of a law on religion."

Beka Mindiashvili, a religion monitor at the ombudsman's office, has a different stance on the registration of religious communities. It is a minor issue, he said.

"The most important thing is to have the government express its goodwill," he said. "Until they adopt a law on religion or register [other denominations] as religious organizations, it is possible to sign agreements and transfer [disputed] property," he said.

“The government's goodwill is not enough to solve this problem,” Jejelidze said. "There should be legislation".

Officials, when asked, gave no concrete answers, saying only that negotiations are under way.

Members of parliament refused to discuss the issue. A spokesperson for the parliamentary judicial committee said it has no proposed law on religious minorities and has never discussed having one.

Tamar Kintsurashvili, President Mikheil Saakashvili's advisor on minority issues, was out of the country for a month and unreachable, according to her office.

The US State Department, which annually reports on religious freedom abroad, issued its own assessment in October. "The status of respect for religious freedom by the Government continued to improve during the reporting period, and government policy continued to contribute to religious freedom," according to its October 2009 assessment of religious conditions in Georgia.

But it added, "Systemic problems remained largely unchanged, such as the return of church property, legal registration of denominations, unequal legal frameworks, and negative media coverage of non-Orthodox religions."