Category: News

Archbishop Aram Ateshyan, General Vicar of the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, will not arrive in Armenia. Fr. Vahram Melikyan, Director of the Information Services Department of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, confirmed the news to .

The Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul had earlier announced that Archbishop Atesyan was planning a visit to Armenia to participate in the sitting of the Supreme Religious Council and the events organized on the occasion of the Pope’s visit.

Fr. Vahram Melikyan did not go into detail about the reasons of the decision. “Speaking about the reasons is inexpedient,” he said.

On 22 June President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan arrived in Artsakh.

RA President Serzh Sargsyan, Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan and NKR second President Arkady Ghoukasyan visited a number of borderline sections in the republic’s southern wing, got acquainted  with the course of military service and the current situation.

On the same day Presidents of the two Armenian states held in capital Stepanakert a consultation with the supreme command staff of the NKR Defense Army and discussed a wide range of issues concerning to the army building.

– Turkey is blocking the plans of a senior German defence official to visit Incirlik air base in July, a spokesman for the German defence ministry said on Wednesday, in a sign of increasingly tense relations between the two NATO allies.

Germany has about 250 soldiers stationed at the base in southern Turkey, along with six Tornado reconnaissance jets and a refueling plane, all of which are participating in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

“Turkish officials do not currently approve of the travel plans,” a ministry spokesman said, confirming a report published by the website of the German magazine Spiegel.

Ralf Brauksiepe, a deputy to German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, had planned to visit the Incirlik military air base along with some German lawmakers next month, the spokesman said, adding that Berlin still hoped the trip could go ahead.

Turkish officials were not immediately available for comment.

Just last week, a German defence ministry spokesman had said the two countries were finalizing an agreement on construction of new housing and aircraft facilities for German forces at the Incirlik air base, holding the deal up as evidence of the continued strength of German-Turkish military relations.

Ties between Germany and Turkey have been strained over a number of issues, including a resolution adopted by the German parliament that declares the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces a genocide.

As Pope Francis prepares to embark on a three-day trip to Armenia this week, experts and church leaders are hoping the visit both highlights strong ties between Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities there and brings about opportunities for political rapprochement in its continent-straddling region, Joshua J. McElwee  writes in a article published by the 

One of the leaders of the Armenian Apostolic church, an Oriental Orthodox community that includes 93 percent of Armenia’s population of three million, hopes that the pope might help encourage friendlier relations with neighboring countries Turkey and Azerbaijan.

“My prayer is that the Holy Father, because of his strong leadership, will help [in] creating better relationships,” said Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, the primate of the Armenian church’s diocese for the eastern half of the U.S.

“Sometimes, religious leaders … can play a stronger role than political leaders, whose interests are different,” said Barsamian. “The interests of the Holy Father are for peace in the world, reconciliation.”

In one of the most anticipated moments of the Armenian visit, Francis will visit a museum dedicated to the memory of the killings on June 25. One Turkish observer and policy expert said reaction to the trip by his government will likely depend on what the pope chooses to say when he visits that museum.

“I don’t think that will be a problem because any state leader who goes to Armenia visits the genocide memorial,” said Aybars Görgülü, an expert at Public Policy and Democratic Studies, an Istanbul-based research and advocacy think-tank.

But, Görgülü added: “It depends on what he will say.”

“If he repeats what he said last year, making another strong statement, then Turkey will have a reaction,” he said, mentioning that the country temporarily withdrew its ambassador to the Vatican after the Pope’s words in 2015.

Barsamian, whose diocese ministers to about a million members of the Armenian church in the U.S., said Francis’ visit is a “great opportunity for the Armenian people to also express their gratitude” for his description of genocide.

“It was such a very clear, very pastoral, very strong message to the world, saying that this is the first genocide of the 20th century and it’s important we recognize the mistakes of the past,” said the archbishop.

“This will be a great opportunity for the Armenian people to express their gratitude, their appreciation to the Holy Father for such a courageous step and for a strong spiritual leadership,” he said.

Beyond the political dimension of the genocide issue, Barsamian said Francis also has an opportunity in Armenia to model ecumenical leadership and friendship during his visits with the Orthodox community.

Paulist Fr. Ronald Roberson, associate director of the U.S. bishops’ secretariat of ecumenical and interreligious affairs, said Catholics and Armenian Orthodox have a “very close” relationship.

Roberson mentioned Pope John Paul II’s visit to Armenia in 2001, when the pontiff celebrated a Mass for the local Roman Catholic community using the same altar that the Orthodox use in their celebrations.

“It’s a classic example of the ‘almost-perfect’ communion that exists between the Catholic church and many of the eastern churches,” said Roberson, adding that there is a “very high level of mutual respect.”

Barsamian said he hoped meetings between Francis and Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, would help Catholics and Orthodox at local levels around the world practice greater friendship.

“Such meetings send a great message to the people, to faithful everywhere, so that locally laypeople and clergy see that on a higher level there is such a connection and communication,” said the archbishop.

“When the pastors, the faithful, see that on this level there is such a warm, brotherly relationship, then on a local level people become closer,” he said.

The Chilean legislature known as the Chamber of Deputies rejected a promoted by Azerbaijani diplomats to “condemn the so-called “Khojaly genocide” and express “their firm condemnation of the military occupation of the territories of the Republic of Azerbaijan,” reports.

This occurred after the same Chamber issued a passed unanimously that condemned the “armed attack by Azerbaijan on the Nagorno Karabakh Republic” on May 18.

The rejected project sought to be a diplomatic response to the political setback that the Azerbaijani government suffered in May. The resolution even called to nullify “any other manifestation of a contrary intention expressed before.”

Armenian Ambassador to Argentina and Chile Alexan Harutyunyan was present during the voting because he traveled to present his credentials to President of Chile Michelle Bachelet. Harutyunyan sent a letter to all the Deputies signed by the Armenian community of Chile, Archbishop Kissag Mouradian, Primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church for Argentina and Chile, and the Ambassador explaining the position of Armenia before the Chamber took the decision.

The project of the Azeri lobby was introduced by Congressmen Gabriel Silber Romo, Roberto Leon Ramirez, Ivan Flores Garcia and Aldo Cornejo Gonzalez of the Christian Democratic Party, Javier Hernandez Hernandez, Romilio Gutierrez Pino and Osvaldo Urrutia Soto of the Independent Democratic Union, Marcos Espinosa Monardes of the Radical Social Democratic Party, Lautaro Carmona Soto of the Communist Party and Daniel Farcas Guendelman of the Party for Democracy. Many of those who had introduced the project voted against it after receiving the letter of the Armenian community in their country.

At least 79 people have been killed by lightning strikes in the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, officials say, the BBC reports.

Fifty three people died in Bihar. Ten people were killed in the eastern state of Jharkhand, and at least 16 died in Madhya Pradesh.

Most of the people who died were working on farms during torrential rains on Tuesday, reports said.

Lightning strikes are common in India during heavy monsoon rains.

In Bihar, the deaths occurred in Nalanda, Aurangabad, Rohtas, Purnea, Munger, Gaya, Saharsa, Bhagalpur, Banka and Kaimur.

Pope Francis has sent a video message to the people ofArmenia, ahead of his visit to the country this weekend. In the message – delivered in Italian – the Holy Father says, “[It is] as a servant of the Gospel and a messenger of peace [that] I desire to come among you, to support [your] every effort towards peace – and I would share our steps on the pathway of reconciliation, which generates hope,” reports.

The full text of the message is below:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In a few days I will have the joy to be with you, in Armenia. Even now, I invite you to pray for this Apostolic journey.

With the help of God, I come among you to fulfil, as the motto of the trip says, a “visit to the first Christian country”. I come as a pilgrim, in this Jubilee Year, to draw on the ancient wisdom of your people and to steep myself the sources of your faith, which is steadfast as your famous crosses carved in stone.

I come to the mystical heights of Armenia as your brother, animated by the desire to see your faces, to pray with you and to share the gift of friendship. Your history and the events of your beloved people stir in me admiration and sorrow: admiration, for you have found in Jesus’ Cross and in your own wits, the wherewithal ever to pick yourselves up and start anew – even after sufferings that are among the most terrible in human memory; pain, for the tragedies that your fathers have lived in their flesh.

Let us not allow the painful memories to take possession of our hearts; even in the face of the repeated assaults of evil, let us not give ourselves up. Let us rather do as Noah, who, after the flood, never tired of looking to heaven and releasing the dove again and again, until one day it came back to him, bringing a tender olive leaf (Gen. 8:11): it was the sign that life could resume and [that] hope must rise.

As servant of the Gospel and a messenger of peace I desire to come among you, to support [your] every effort towards peace – and I would share our steps on the pathway of reconciliation, which generates hope.

May the great saints of your people, especially the Doctor of the Church, Gregory of Narek, bless our meetings, to which I look forward with tender longing. In particular, I look forward to embracing my Brother, Karekin, and, along with him, to give fresh impetus to our path towards full unity.

Last year, from several countries, you came to Rome, and at the tomb of St. Peter, we prayed together. Now I come to your blessed land to strengthen our communion, to advance along the path of reconciliation, and to allow ourselves together to be animated by hope.

Pope Francis will meet with descendants of Armenians who fled persecution by the Ottoman Empire a century ago during his visit later this week to Armenia, according to the.

The meeting will take place at the Tsitsernakaberd monumentin Yeevan which commemorates the approximately 1.5 million Armenians victims.

The encounter will be “a very moving” event and one of the most important activities during the pope’s trip next weekend to Armenia, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.

Francis will lay a wreath at the monument and will greet a group of children who will show him pictures and items related to the “Medz Yeghern” (The Great Evil).

The pope will then enter the monument within a circle enclosed by 12 huge, slanted stone walls and will stand before the eternal flame that honors the victims.

Francis will attend the planting of a tree that will memorialize his visit to Tsitsernakaberd.

Later, Pope Francis will meet a dozen descendants of the 400 Armenian orphans who were rescued in 1915 and lodged at the papal Castel Gandolfo residence near Rome.

Francis’s visit to Tsitsernakaberd is expected to be the highlight of his trip to Armenia, the 14th journey outside Italy during his papacy.

In April 2015, Pope Francis celebrated a Mass at the Vatican to commemorate the centennial of the massacres, calling them “the first genocide of the 20th century.”

German public broadcaster ZDF said Wednesday that a Turkish television channel has ended a partnership with it over Germany‘s decision to officially designate the Ottoman killings of Armenians during World War I as genocide, e reports.

Turkey‘s Kanal D will no longer show the ZDF children‘s news segment “logo!” due to numerous complaints from viewers about last month‘s Bundestag decision, which at the time prompted Turkey to recall its ambassador to Berlin and summon the German envoy to Ankara.