Pope Francis calls Armenian deaths ‘first genocide of 20th century’

MarketWatch
April 12 2015

Pope Francis calls Armenian deaths ‘first genocide of 20th century’

By Francis X. Rocca

ROME–Pope Francis on Sunday referred to the 1915 mass killings of
Armenians by Turks as the “first genocide of the 20th century,”
entering into a tense historical debate with wider implications for
the Vatican’s relations with Turkey and Islam.

With the statement, during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in the
Vatican to mark 100 years since the killings, the pope linked the
event to contemporary persecution of Christians in the Muslim world,
effectively turning the occasion into his latest denunciation of
attacks on Christians by Muslim groups, including the April 2 killings
at a university in Kenya.

Armenians say as many as 1.5 million Armenians were systematically
killed during World War I in today’s eastern Turkey, which was then
part of the Ottoman Empire.

Many countries officially recognize the killings as genocide. But
Turkey contests Armenian claims about the scale of losses; it argues
that hundreds of thousands actually died in warfare and famine, and
that many Turks were also killed by Armenians. Turkey argues that the
question of genocide should be left to historians rather than
politicians.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican’s envoy to Ankara
following the pope’s comments, according to a Turkish official. The
ministry will issue a statement later on Sunday, the official said,
without providing additional details about the meeting with the
Vatican representative.

Pope Francis said on Sunday that “it is necessary, and indeed a duty”
to “recall the centenary of that tragic event, that immense and
senseless slaughter whose cruelty your forbears had to
endure…Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep
bleeding without bandaging it.”

Sunday wasn’t the first time a pope has referred to the 1915 deaths as
genocide; the Vatican’s published version of the pope’s words cited a
2001 common declaration by Pope John Paul II and Catholicos Karekin
II, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, who was also present at
Sunday’s Mass, along with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

But Pope Francis went further than the 2001 declaration, calling the
killing of Armenians one of “three massive and unprecedented
tragedies” in the 20th century.

“The remaining two were perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism,” he said.
The latter reference was apparently to the 1932-33 man-made famine in
Ukraine, part of Joseph Stalin’s effort to collectivize Soviet
agriculture, which killed as many as 7.5 million.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress