In Jerusalem, Secretary of State Rubio discusses presence of Christians in Israel

By Stella Mehrabekyan and Paul Vartan Sookiasian

During his first visit to the Middle East as U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem yesterday, where he met with the Armenian Patriarchate. 

The Patrichate’s Chancellor the Very Rev. Fr. Aghan Gogchyan, who was at the meeting, tells CivilNet Rubio’s visit was not official in nature. Rubio attended a mass in the church’s Catholic portion. This is unlike the visit made by former President Joseph Biden to the Church of the Nativity in 2022, during which he met with the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Nourhan Manougian.

Gogchyan said of the clergy from various denominations who were in the room: “We raised concerns about the presence of Christians in Israel and their potential departure. The Secretary of State noted that many Christians, including Armenians, have already left Syria, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries, and that the U.S. will do everything to ensure that the Christian presence in Israel remains stable, preventing a repetition of what happened in those countries,” said Gogchyan.

That same day, Rubio met with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he discussed the current ceasefire with Hamas and President Donald Trump’s plan to remove all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in order to redevelop it as prime waterfront real estate. Observers have drawn parallels between Israel’s strategy in Gaza and its close ally Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.