TBILISI, Georgia | The Patriarchate of Georgia says it faced pressure to help promote acceptance of same-sex marriage, as it rejected wording in a European Parliament report linking the Georgian Orthodox Church to a “Russian influence network.”
Archpriest Andria Jagmaidze, head of the Patriarchate’s Public Relations Service, called the wording regrettable and argued that policy toward the Church was fueling anti-European sentiment in Georgia.
In an interview with Imedi Week, Jagmaidze referred to a meeting that he said took place at the Patriarchate in August 2023 with Hadja Lahbib, then Belgium’s foreign minister. He said the incident was not made public at the time because Georgian society was already deeply polarized.
According to his account, the European official spoke about the Church’s influence in Georgian society and asked it to help promote acceptance of same-sex marriage. Jagmaidze said he responded by citing an example from sports that he linked to the LGBTQ+ agenda. He said Lahbib replied that she had not come for a discussion and then left.
The Patriarchate spokesman described a different climate in relations with the European Union until 2018, referring specifically to János Herman and to assurances that Georgia’s European path would not require it to abandon its traditions and Christian values.
From 2019, he said, pressure surrounding Pride events changed the discussion. At a conference in Batumi on Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic course, he said he asked German politician Michael Roth whether such public events would become a condition for the country’s accession to Euro-Atlantic institutions.
Similar concerns, according to Jagmaidze, were raised in Brussels during meetings with European politicians, including Andrius Kubilius and Rasa Juknevičienė. There, he said, the Church warned that promoting the LGBTQ+ agenda under the banner of human rights would strengthen anti-European trends.
Jagmaidze attributed to Juknevičienė the remark that, just as Europeans had grown accustomed to that agenda, Georgia would eventually do the same.
In contrast to the European contacts, he spoke positively about meetings held in the United States during the same period, under the Trump administration. He referred to the State Department and Sam Brownback, then U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, saying the Church had sought direct dialogue rather than being assessed solely through reports by nongovernmental organizations.
The Patriarchate spokesman insisted that the Church was not acting against individuals, but was responding to the public promotion of an agenda that, he said, disregarded the views of a large part of Georgian society.
“That we remain faithful to family values, that we speak about Georgia’s demographic problem and that we regard abortion as the taking of human life are positions this ideology does not accept,” he said, alleging that this was why attempts were being made to attach the label of “Russian influence” to the Church.
