Aleteia
April 12 2015
Pope Francis Proclaims Armenian Monk Doctor of the Church on Divine Mercy Sunday
And 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
(Vatican Radio) On Divine Mercy Sunday — the Second Sunday of Easter —
Pope Francis celebrated Solemn Mass for the Centenary of the Armenian
Martyrdom. During the Liturgy, the Holy Father also proclaimed the
great Armenian Saint Gregory of Narek a Doctor of the Church.
Pope Francis processed into St. Peter’s Basilica accompanied by the
Catholicoi Karekin II and Aram I of the Armenian Apostolic Church,
with the Patriarch Catholicos Nerses Bedros XIX a few paces ahead.
Patriarch Nerses concelebrated Mass with the Holy Father.
Greeting the Armenian faithful who had come to Rome for the event,
Pope Francis spoke out boldly against cruelty, recalling the occasions
when he had previously spoken of “a third world war” being fought
piecemeal, a war “in which we daily witness savage crimes, brutal
massacres and senseless destruction.” Today, he said, “we are
experiencing a sort of genocide created by a general and collective
indifference, by the complicit silence of Cain…”
Pope Francis noted three “massive and unprecedented tragedies” of the
twentieth century, the first of which was the “Great Crime,” the
systematic massacre of Armenian Christians who were slaughtered
because of their faith. The atrocities of the Nazis and the
Communists, along with other mass killings, makes it seem as if
“humanity is incapable of putting a halt to the shedding of innocent
blood… We have not yet learned,” he said, “that ‘war is madness,’ a
‘senseless slaughter.'”
It is necessary, and even a duty, he said, to recall these events,
notably the massacre of the Armenians, “with hearts filled with pain,
but at the same time with great hope in the risen Christ.”
In his homily for Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis focused on the
wounds of Christ, the wounds our Lord showed His disciples so that
they might believe He was truly risen from the dead. “The wounds of
Jesus are wounds of mercy,” the Pope said. “Through these wounds we
can see the entire mystery of Christ and of God,” the whole history of
salvation. The wounds of Christ proclaim the mercy of God from
generation to generation.
Alluding once again to the centenary of the massacre of the Armenians,
Pope Francis said the tragic events of history can leave us feeling
crushed, wondering “why?” Humanity cannot fill the abyss left by the
mystery of evil. “It is only Jesus, God made man, who died on the
Cross and who fills the abyss of sin with the depth of His mercy.”
Pope Francis concluded, “Brothers and sisters, behold the way which
God has opened for us to finally go out from our slavery to sin and
death, and thus enter into the land of life and peace. Jesus,
crucified and risen, is the way, and His wounds are full of mercy.”
From: A. Papazian