In the wake of the furor regarding the deplorable situation of the Sanahin Monastery in Armenia, the Ministry of Culture has issued a fact sheet claiming that the government is taking appropriate action and allocating funds to rectify the issues.

I'll omit the historical references and start by noting that the Armenian Apostolic Church received ownership rights (property deed) to Sanahin in 2011.

In 2010, the Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the Berlin College of Advanced Technologies, sent a team of experts to the monastery and conducted a 3D scan of the monastery and sections that were experiencing structural deformities.

The statement argues that these unstable wall sections needed to be addressed before repairs could be made to the dome whose tremendous weight load could demolish the entire structure.

In May of this year, German experts, with sponsorship of the Gugark Diocese, took samples of the walls for laboratory testing.

This September, an overall draft plan for the restoration of the monastery will be prepared based on the scientific findings of the German experts.

The Armenian government plans to allocate 6 million AMD to clean the growth of grass and shrubbery from the monastery using a physical-chemical method.

For the renovation project scheduled for 2012-2014, the government will allocate around 90 million AMD.