The Vatican Villains at Play

By Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, 27 April 2025

The villains of the recent conspiracy against Armenians that the late Pope headed are Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, Apostolic Nuncio Jose Avelino Bettencourt and junior partners Bishop Vladimir Fekete, and Father Mark Lewis. Five manqués right out of the pages of Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Agog by the aroma of Azerbaijan’s petrodollars, the above hoods in hoods and the UnHoly Father toiled for years to legitimize war criminal Aliyev’s dictatorship by praising Ill Ham & Family, awarding them high honors, hosting them, and uttering bare-faced lies about the nature of the criminal Turkic dictatorship. It’s no secret why they committed these revolting acts: good old lucre, money, petrogold or in Azeri lingo, manat.  Their efforts were not in vain.

Here is an abridged list of Vatican’s sins and crimes against the Armenians and on behalf of Baby Aliyev.

1. Although Azerbaijan’s wide-scale bribery campaign, called Laundromat, to corrupt European politicians, was publicized across Europe in the press and as a result European Parliament member Luca Volente was kicked out of the EP, the Vatican persisted with its courtship of Azerbaijan’s “First Family.” Ditto for the fake election campaigns when somehow no less than 92 percent of Azeri voters keep voting hereditary dictator for the fourth or fifth time. But who is counting?
2. The Vatican gave war criminal Junior Aliyev its highest honor–the “Grand Cross of the Order of Piano”– in “appreciation and gratitude.”
3. Point man Cardinal Gugerotti arranged an unknown sum of donation to the Vatican from the Heydar Aliyev Foundation which is headed by no less than Mehriban Aliyeva, the wife of Ill Ham, and herself Vice-President of Azerbaijan. You see, women are liberated in Ill Ham’s dictatorship.

The deep friendship of Mehriban and Gugerotti goes back to 2002. In return for the donation, the Holy See expressed its admiration of Azerbaijan’s openness toward different faiths. Has anyone at the Vatican heard of Sumgait massacre or of the Lachin Corridor (Berdzor) where more than 100,000 starving Artsakh Armenians were marooned as they were driven from their homes by Aliyev’s goons?

4. Father George Ryssen, an authority on the Armenian Genocide, was fired from his job at the Pontifical Gregorian University because he had criticized higher-ups for refusing to recognize the genocide. “Thou shall not offend the brethren Turks” must be Vatican gang’s 11^th Commandment.
5. The hoods in hood hid the fact that Baku’s Catholic cathedral was built with Aliyev’s petrodollars (the land was given by Aliyev’s Dad) Heydar, the ex-KGB head. Instead, Vatican lied that the money was donated by overseas Catholics.
6. Although since 2014 Azerbaijan has violated the Council of Europe’s protocols at least 260 times, Vatican’s romance with Baku has persisted. Friends in need, etc.
7. When Azerbaijan destroyed Armenian churches, religious monuments, and cultural artifacts, there was not a peep from the Pope and Co. When told about the miserable condition of Artsakh Armenians, the Pope said he had prayed for them. His prayer and one manat couldn’t buy a bowl of soup to a starving Artsakh child. What stopped him from picking up the phone and calling the Azeri butcher?
8. When Mrs. Aliyev visited Vatican, she was received by the Holy See’s top officials. When Armenian Prime Minister Nicol Pashinyan visited Vatican, he was hosted by an apostolic nuncio.
9. In 2013 Azerbaijan awarded the Order of Friendship to the Vatican for “Special contribution to the development of friendship, economic and cultural relations between Azerbaijan and the Vatican.” The honor, bestowed for the first time to any person or organization, was, of course, for services rendered.
10. Earlier this month, the Vatican helped organize and promote a mock academic shindig in Rome where Azerbaijani “academics” presented papers which indicated Armenian art and architecture are the creations of the inhabitants of “ancient Azerbaijan.” The fact that the land now occupied mostly by Muslim-Turkic-Tatar people was established as Azerbaijan in 1918, was neither here nor there.

Soon, smoke will rise from a famous Vatican pipe indicating that the cardinals had elected the new Pope. The Armenian government, the Catholicos in Echmiadzin, the Catholicos in Antelias and major Armenian organizations around the world should launch a campaign to force the Vatican reconsider its immoral association with the Azeri warmongers. Finally, Armenians owe a big “thank you” to the Armenians of France who exposed the Azeri-Holy See shindig-misappropriation in early April.