“The Wall Street Journal” has referred to Pope Francis’s three-day trip to Armenia.
“The Wall Street Journal” has referred to Pope Francis’s three-day trip to Armenia.
The article reads: Pope Francis travels Friday for a three-day trip to Armenia, where he will visit the memorial to those who died in the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turks, potentially straining relations between the Vatican and Ankara again.
The trip also comes just after a major outbreak of violence in the turbulent Caucasus region, when ethnic Armenian separatists fought Azerbaijani forces for four days in April over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The main question when Pope Francis goes to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on Saturday is whether he will echo his description last year of the mass killings by Ottoman forces as the "first genocide of the 20th century."
Turkey responded to the 2015 statement, made during a commemorative Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, by immediately recalling its ambassador to the Vatican to Ankara for consultations. It took 10 months before the ambassador returned. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the pope’s statement and warned him “not repeat this mistake.”
St. John Paul II used the word genocide in the Armenian context during his own 2001 visit to Armenia, in a joint declaration with Catholicos Karekin II, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, who will also host Pope Francis. “The Wall Street Journal” has referred to Pope Francis’s three-day trip to Armenia.
The article reads: Pope Francis travels Friday for a three-day trip to Armenia, where he will visit the memorial to those who died in the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turks, potentially straining relations between the Vatican and Ankara again.
The trip also comes just after a major outbreak of violence in the turbulent Caucasus region, when ethnic Armenian separatists fought Azerbaijani forces for four days in April over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The main question when Pope Francis goes to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on Saturday is whether he will echo his description last year of the mass killings by Ottoman forces as the "first genocide of the 20th century."
Turkey responded to the 2015 statement, made during a commemorative Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, by immediately recalling its ambassador to the Vatican to Ankara for consultations. It took 10 months before the ambassador returned. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the pope’s statement and warned him “not repeat this mistake.”
St. John Paul II used the word genocide in the Armenian context during his own 2001 visit to Armenia, in a joint declaration with Catholicos Karekin II, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, who will also host Pope Francis.
But Pope Francis went further by calling the massacre of Armenians one of “three massive and unprecedented tragedies” in the 20th century. Tensions between Armenia and another neighbor—Azerbaijan—will also hang over the visit.
