In the early hours of Thursday, November 19, the Armenian St. George Church (Sourb Gevorg Church of Mughni) built in 1356, collapsed in Tbilisi.

St. George Church of Mughni is one of the five disputed churches which have become an issue of controversy between the Armenian Apostolic and Georgian Churches.

“Armenian church officials in Georgia believe that full responsibility for this lies with Georgia’s Ministry of Culture and Monument Preservation, on whose balance the church lies. All this leaves the impression that the Georgian Patriarchate and authorities, by not resolving the issue of returning the churches to the diocese and showing proper attention to the preservation of the churches, are intentionally destroying important Armenian cultural monuments,” says the press release by the Georgian-Armenian diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The medieval cruciform central dome church is cited in the 18th century documents as one of the Haghpat Diocese’s (Haghpat was one of the largest and most important religious centers of Armenia) seven churches in Tbilisi. Until the mid-1980s (in the Soviet times) the church served as a museum of folk art. In 1990, it was assessed as accident-prone and was completely shut down. The church then fell into complete decay.
This is the second Armenian church that has collapsed in Georgia, the first being St. Astvatsatsin Church of Shamkhor which collapsed in 1989.