Patriarchate’s spokesperson: head of opposition-minded Mtavari Arkhi channel unleashed war against church

Head of Georgian Patriarchate’s Public Relations Department, Andria Jaghmaidze, says that director of the opposition-minded Mtavari Arkhi TV channel, former official under the United National Movement (UNM) government, Nika Gvaralia, has unleashed a war against the church when he slammed Patriarch Ilia II’s ‘locum tenens’ Shio in his recent show. 

 

Senaki and Chkhorotskhu Metropolitan Shio Mujiri has responded to the recent signing of a petition by several top clerics, demanding the release of former president Mikheil Saakashvili from prison, and said that ‘gospel does not approve reconciliation in all cases.’ 

 

The clerics who signed the agreement said that Georgian political forces should reconcile. 

 

Gvaramia said that what Shio said ‘was disgusting.’ 

 

Jaghmaidze reiterated that Mtavari Arkhi, another opposition-minded Formula TV channel, as well as certain individuals and theologists are engaged with discrediting the church. 

 

Saakashvili was arrested in Tbilisi on October 1, a day before Georgian municipal elections. 

 

He claims he returned after eight years in political exile to ‘save the country’ from the ‘pro-Russian Georgian Dream government.’ 

 

Saakashvili, who is now a citizen of Ukraine, was convicted in absentia in Georgia back in 2018 and was sentenced to six years in prison for abuse of authority.