“We want to enter the Norashen Church to light candles, that’s our right, no?” says Mikayel Davtyan, an Armenian from Tiflis. “Every Sunday we go to the Norashen courtyard, it’s a meeting place for Armenians. Why can’t we go inside and light candles?”
Some 650 Armenian churches are registered in the territory of Georgia. Just in Tiflis alone there were 29 Armenian churches during the 19th century. Today only two remain. Today the property rights of six churches expropriated during the Soviet era remains unresolved – Saint Norashen (15th century) in Tbilisi, Saint Nshan (18th c.), Shamkhoretsots Holy Mother of God (or Karmir Avetaran, 18th c.), Yerevantsots Saint Minas (18th c.), Moughni...
There has been controversy surrounding Armenian churches in Georgia since the 1990s. The Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church Diocese in Georgia insists that they have churches there, some of which have remained untended and others of which have been claimed by the Georgians.