Armenian Legal Center condemns Vatican University conference legitimizing Azerbaijan’s cultural appropriation of Armenian Christianity

WASHINGTON—The Armenian Legal Center for Justice and Human Rights (ALC) has issued an urgent open letter to the Pontifical Gregorian University, condemning its decision to host the Azerbaijani state-sponsored international conference titled “Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity,” held on April 10, 2025. The ALC warns that this event served as a platform for historical distortion and an attempt to legitimize Azerbaijan’s campaign to erase the Armenian Christian presence in Artsakh, in direct violation of international law and academic ethics. 

“The event, organized with the participation of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, raises urgent legal, ethical and human rights concerns with direct implications under international law,” states the letter from the ALC. “By permitting a state-led conference advancing the discredited theory of ‘Caucasian Albanian’ continuity—used to appropriate Armenian Christian religious and cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh—the University risks complicity in a broader campaign of denial and cultural genocide.”