GEORGIA: Religious minorities still second-class faiths?

25 November 2005
Forum 18, Oslo, Norway
By Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service

Only two in-country non-Orthodox religious communities in Georgia – the Mormons and the Muslims - have received state registration, Forum 18 News Service has found. [...].
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Without legal status, religious communities cannot own property communally, run communal bank accounts, or go to court as a community. This leads to some strange anomalies. "It is completely unacceptable that the Armenian Apostolic cathedral in Tbilisi is owned personally by the archbishop," a priest of the Armenian Church told Forum 18 from the church headquarters at Echmiadzin in Armenia on 21 November. "We want legal status as a fully-fledged religious community. It is only right and proper."

Registration of religious organisations became possible – for the first time in 15 years - after parliament on 6 April 2005 approved amendments to the Civil Code, allowing religious communities to register with the Ministry of Justice.[...].
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These communities want to have status as public legal personalities, a status granted only to the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate in a controversial 2002 Concordat between the Orthodox Church and the state. The Concordat not only granted the Orthodox Patriarchate legal status, but also numerous privileges denied to all other religious communities. [...].
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Mindiashvili of the Ombudsperson's Office [...] said that while he has detected little discontent with the new registration terms from Protestants and other minorities, the Catholics and Armenians have been public about their objections.
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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.