The press office of the Holy See did not release a readout of the meeting in the following hours. The official Vatican News portal likewise gave no details of the pontiff’s conversation with Pashinian.
It said the audience lasted for about 30 minutes and was followed by an exchange of gifts. Its Armenian-language service also noted that Pashinian’s trip to the Vatican “lasted for only a few hours.”
An Armenian government statement on the visit said Pashinian told Francis that increased contacts between Yerevan and the Vatican testify to their “special interstate relationship.” It said the premier also praised the pontiff’s international peace efforts and briefed him on the “latest developments in the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process.”
“The prime minister thanked His Holiness for the Holy See's continued efforts to release Armenian prisoners [held in Azerbaijan,]” added the statement. It did not shed light on those efforts.
Last year, one of those 23 prisoners, Gevorg Sujian, appealed to Francis to help release him Azerbaijani custody in a letter forwarded to the Vatican through his family in Armenia. Sujian’s wife Lilit said on Monday that the family still does not know whether the Pope has read the letter.
Sujian and a fellow aid worker, Davit Davtian, were captured by Azerbaijani troops just a few days after a Russian-brokered ceasefire stopped the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. An Azerbaijani court subsequently sentenced them to 15 years in prison on a string of criminal charges denied by them.
The Vatican has reacted cautiously to the six-week war and subsequent developments. In January 2023, Francis expressed concerns about Azerbaijan’s blockade of Karabakh’s sole land link with Armenia that caused a serious humanitarian crisis in the Armenian-populated region.
But unlike the United States, the European Union and Russia, he stopped short of explicitly demanding that Baku reopen the corridor. Nor is the pontiff known to have publicly denounced Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive that forced Karabakh’s entire population to flee to Armenia.