“For the past 22 years, we have been witnessing an organised campaign against the Georgian Orthodox Church, with one unmistakable goal, to discredit the institution that commands the greatest authority in Georgia,” stated the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, in remarks made to journalists.

According to Papuashvili, the attempts to discredit the Church amount, in reality, to something close to a religious war, whose aim is to supplant the spiritual cornerstone that has sustained Georgia through the centuries.

“Yesterday, I published on social media a 2004 interview with the Patriarch, touching on the period when the United National Movement had just come to power, and the Patriarch was already warning us what we were dealing with. He spoke of a difficult year marked by an anti-Church campaign which, in his view, had been orchestrated from abroad. We have been watching this for 22 years now, an organised campaign against the Georgian Orthodox Church with a clear and deliberate purpose: to undermine the institution that holds the greatest authority in Georgia, the Church, which serves as the spiritual foundation of Georgian society, thereby paving the way to replace it with an ideology of their own making. This is, in truth, something close to a religious war, aiming to displace the spiritual cornerstone that has carried our nation through the centuries.

What we are also witnessing is an attempt by Brussels bureaucrats and certain European leaders to turn the European Union into a kind of pseudo-religion. We already see many quasi-religious hallmarks in their conduct, talk of values and principles, yet rarely any specificity as to their content. We see their local adherents here in Georgia with their daily rituals, codes of conduct, and slogans. They behave in an utterly fundamentalist manner when it comes to Brussels and the EU, brooking no criticism whatsoever. These are ordinary fundamentalists who have elevated the European Union to the status of a pseudo-religion. And that is precisely what we are witnessing. The Patriarch spoke of this as early as 2004, describing the methods that were then beginning to be put into motion, methods we had not yet fully understood at the time. He spoke of attempts to affix labels: first ‘anti-Western’, then ‘pro-Russian’. It was through precisely these labels that the work of discrediting was carried out.

We have seen that individuals involved in the campaign to discredit the Church were directly funded from abroad. I would remind you that the most recent foreign funding, from France, was received by Sovlab, the group engaged in discrediting the Church. You will recall the Giorgi Kandelaki affair involving an icon at the Holy Trinity Cathedral. After all of that, they received funding from France. The so-called Tolerance Centre, which is presented as being affiliated with the Public Defender’s Office, was financed by the EU and other foreign sources, yet it was ultimately a clear case of outright fraud. They have no connection whatsoever to the Public Defender. They even appropriated that term from the Constitution, as though they were some constitutionally recognised body. These individuals were directly engaged not only in discrediting the Church, but also the Patriarch personally and specific individuals by name. All of this has been running on foreign funding for years,” Papuashvili said.

He further stated that “despite the millions poured in against the Georgian people, to discredit their spiritual foundation, every last penny has been thrown to the wind.”

“In a single day, Georgian society made its position known on all of it. I am quite certain that several ambassadors were left in shock when they saw that every attempt to undermine the Church had come to nothing. We witnessed more than one and a half million people gathered at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, and it became clear for all to see where the nation stands, and where those protesters stand who wish to pass themselves off as the Georgian people,” Papuashvili said.