Amid continued violence by ISIS and other militant Islamist groups, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue issued a declaration stressing that dialogue with Islam must be sought “now more than ever.”
The council emphasized that “killing in the name of a religion offends God, but it is also a defeat for humanity.”
The declaration was released April 22, and is the second of its kind issued by the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.
The Catholic Center for Studies and Media (CCSM) in Jordan, on Thursday, April 23, expressed its solidarity with the brotherly Armenians who currently mark the centenary of the genocide to which they were subjected because of their Christian faith in 1915.
At St. Martha’s House this morning Francis called on faithful to “think of our brothers whose throats were slit on the beach in Libya”; “the young boy who was burnt alive by his companions” and “those Ethiopians”.
At a time when Christians of all denominations are being attacked by radical Muslims in many first parts of the world, it is the centenary of what has been called the first genocide of the 20th century: the slaughter of between 1 million and 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks and Kurds in 1915, with sporadic violence against the remaining Armenian refugees for the next decade.
Pope Francis called on Sunday for the international community to act "decisively and promptly" to prevent tragedies like the capsizing of a boat with 700 migrants on Saturday evening. The pontiff also said Christians cannot communicate Christ's resurrection if they are focused on vanity or selfishness.
Those who will be attending the 2015 Ostension are well aware of the fact that the image they will have before them for just a few brief instants is the subject of much controversy and discussion. But this is not going to stop hundreds of thousands of people from considering the journey to Turin worthwhile.
The possibility of a visit to Havana at the end of the Pope’s trip to US cities – Philadelphia, Washington and New York - is being looked into.
A hundred years passed since the death of nearly one and a half million Armenians, without counting the other minorities who knew the same fate, and the issue remains a debate for Turkey. Pope Francis himself did not hesitate to use this term of International Law, “genocide”, to refer to this massacre, despite Turkey’s reaction. In an interview for “Vatican Insider”, Aram I, Catholics of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Silicy who lives in Lebanon, gives an analysis which clearly describes its peaceful but clear position.
In March last year reports emerged of a nightmare unfolding in the Armenian town of Kassab in northern Syria. A horde of Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists descended on the city, forcing the Christian residents out of their ancestral homes. It was widely reported that the Turkish army had helped them or, at best, had turned a blind eye.
Fr. Lombardi said the subject of the mixed historic commission and the historical archives mentioned by Turkey’s president Erdogan is interesting.
The Vatican has taken stock of the criticisms Turkey directed at the Pope after Francis’ words on the Armenian “genocide”, adding it does not wish to enter into arguments. Through its spokesman, the Vatican defined the comment which the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan made yesterday about potentially opening the archives and creating a joint commission on the events of 1915 as “interesting”.
