NBC Bay Area
April 12 2015
Pope Fancis Calls Armenian Slaughter “1st Genocide of 20th Century”
The pope’s comments amount to a politically explosive pronouncement,
and will likely stoke anger in dominantly Muslim Turkey.
By Nicole Winfield
Pope Francis on Sunday honored the 100th anniversary of the slaughter
of Armenians by calling it “the first genocide of the 20th century,” a
politically explosive declaration that will certainly anger Turkey.
Francis, who has close ties to the Armenian community from his days in
Argentina, defended his pronouncement by saying it was his duty to
honor the memory of the innocent men, women, children, priests and
bishops who were “senselessly” murdered by Ottoman Turks.
“Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding
without bandaging it,” he said at the start of a Mass Sunday in the
Armenian Catholic rite in St. Peter’s Basilica honoring the centenary.
Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey, however, refuses to call it a genocide and has insisted that
the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.
Turkey’s embassy to the Holy See canceled a planned news conference
for Sunday, presumably after learning that the pope would utter the
word “genocide” over its objections.
Several European countries recognize the massacres as genocide, though
Italy and the United States, for example, have avoided using the term
officially given the importance they place on Turkey as an ally.
Francis is not the first pope to call the massacre a genocide. In his
remarks, Francis cited a 2001 declaration signed by St. John Paul II
and the Armenian church leader, Karenkin II, which called it as the
first genocide of the 20th century.
Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, whose ties with Turkey and the Muslim
world were initially strained, avoided the “g-word.”
Francis said the Armenian killings were the first of three “massive
and unprecedented” genocides that was followed by the Holocaust and
Stalinism. He said others had followed, including in Cambodia, Rwanda,
Burundi and Bosnia.
“It seems that the human family has refused to learn from its mistakes
caused by the law of terror, so that today too there are those who
attempt to eliminate others with the help of a few and with the
complicit silence of others who simply stand by,” he said.
Francis has frequently denounced the “complicit silence” of the world
community in the face of the modern day slaughter of Christians and
other religious minorities by Islamic extremists. And while he was
archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio
referred to the Armenian “genocide” on several occasions, including
three separate citations in his 2010 book “On Heaven and Earth.”
The Armenians have been campaigning for greater recognition of the
genocide in the lead-up to the centenary, which will be formally
marked on April 24. Sunday’s Mass was concelebrated by the Armenian
Catholic patriarch, Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, and was attended by
Armenian Orthodox church leaders as well as Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan, who sat in a place of honor in the basilica.
Francis also honored the Armenian community at the start of the Mass
by pronouncing a 10th-century Armenian mystic, St. Gregory of Narek, a
doctor of the church. Only 35 people have been given the title, which
is reserved for those whose writings have greatly served the universal
church.
From: Baghdasarian