Vatican Holds ‘Moment of Reflection’ on Armenian Genocide

14:39, 14 Mar 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

The Pontifical Oriental Institute on Thursday held a “moment of
reflection” to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the “Metz Yeghern,
the Great Evil: ter voghormia, Lord have mercy,” Vatican Radio
reports.

Metz Yeghern is the traditional expression used for attacks by the
government against ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Between one
and one and a half million people are believed to have been killed
between 1915 and 1918.

Thursday’s event centered on the presentation of the work of Father
George Ryssen, SJ, and on the commemoration of alumni of the
Pontifical Armenian College who were killed during that time. Father
Ruyssen’s work, of which four of a projected seven volumes have been
published, collects all the documents pertaining to the historical
events to be found in the different archives of the Holy See.

The Prefect for the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Cardinal
Leonardo Sandri – who is also Chancellor of the Institute – attend the
event, and addressed the participants.

In his remarks, Cardinal Sandri said the “moment of reflection” was
not only an academic exercise, but was also “a Christian gesture of
justice and mercy.” The event, he said, shows that we are untiring
seekers after the Truth that is Christ; collaborators [working for]
the coming of the city ‘in which dwells righteousness’; and
supplicants invoking the intercession of the witnesses, the martyroi
of the Armenian people” who made the supreme profession of faith by
shedding their blood.

Cardinal Sandri also noted the gratitude of the Armenian people to the
Pope of the time, Benedict XV. He said the work of Father Ruyssen
“allows us to understand how the Holy See was diligent in attempting
to stay the hands of the executioners, and to bring possible relief
and aid to those who escaped the massacres that took place one hundred
years ago.”

We are still saddened, he continued, for those who rose up to kill
their neighbours, but even more, astonished by the silence of so many
nations and so many powerful people, as we are still astonished to day
on the part of others to speak with objectivity, to arrive at the
longed-for goal of reconciliation, in truth and in justice.”

The mystery of evil, he said, “mysterium iniquitatis, that is able to
flow from the heart of man, and that is made manifest in the
destruction that every sin brings with it, compels us to get down on
our knees, and pray, as we say in the subtitle of our meeting: “Ter
voghormia… Lord have mercy!” Have mercy on man whom you have created,
but who now is wounded, is far from you, poor, a sinner, capable, as
Cain was, of conceiving death for his brother, capable of nourishing
hatred and seeking vengeance.”

Cardinal Sandri concluded his remarks with the words of Benedict XVI
during the former Pope’s visit to the extermination camp at Auschwitz:
“We cannot peer into God’s mysterious plan – we see only piecemeal,
and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and
history. Then we would not be defending man, but only contributing to
his downfall. No – when all is said and done, we must continue to cry
out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget
mankind, your creature! And our cry to God must also be a cry that
pierces our very heart, a cry that awakens within us God’s hidden
presence – so that his power, the power he has planted in our hearts,
will not be buried or choked within us by the mire of selfishness,
pusillanimity, indifference or opportunism. Let us cry out to God,
with all our hearts, at the present hour, when new misfortunes befall
us, when all the forces of darkness seem to issue anew from human
hearts: whether it is the abuse of God’s name as a means of justifying
senseless violence against innocent persons, or the cynicism which
refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in him. Let us cry out
to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to
see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more
violence – a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the
loser.”