Francis celebrates the Mass for the centenary of the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians. He cites the other two “unprecedented tragedies” perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism, the mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia, and those suffered by Christians still today
“Sadly, today too we hear the muffled and forgotten cry of so many of our defenceless brothers and sisters who, on account of their faith in Christ or their ethnic origin, are publicly and ruthlessly put to death – decapitated, crucified, burned alive – or forced to leave their homeland.” Opening the mass celebrated in commemoration of the centenary of Metz Yeghern, the “Great Crime”, the extermination of one and a half million Armenians perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, Francis reminded the congregation that the massive and unprecedented tragedies of the twentieth century are unfortunately not just an experience of the past. The liturgy, during which the Pope declared St. Gregory of Narek Doctor of the Armenian Church, was attended by the President of Armenia Serž Sargsyan; Karekin II, Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians; Aram I, Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia of the Armenian Apostolic Church; and Nerses Bedros XIX, Patriarch of Cilicia of Armenian Catholics.
“Today too we are experiencing a sort of genocide created by general and collective indifference, by the complicit silence of Cain.” In the past century”, he added, “our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies. The first, which is widely considered “the first genocide of the twentieth century” struck your own Armenian people, the first Christian nation, as well as Catholic and Orthodox Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greeks. Bishops and priests, religious, women and men, the elderly and even defenceless children and the infirm were murdered.” Bergoglio thus returns to using the word “genocide” in relation to the massacre of the Armenians, even if he is only quoting his predecessor John Paul II, who used the term in the common declaration signed with Karekin II on 27 September 2001 in Etchmiadzin.
The Pope continued, “The remaining two were perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism. And more recently there have been other mass killings, like those in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia. It seems that humanity is incapable of putting a halt to the shedding of innocent blood. It seems that the enthusiasm generated at the end of the Second World War has dissipated and is now disappearing. 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. We have not yet learned that ‘war is madness’, ‘senseless slaughter’.”
“Dear Armenian Christians”, Francis said, “today, with hearts filled with pain but at the same time with great hope in the risen Lord, we recall the centenary of that tragic event, that immense and senseless slaughter whose cruelty your forebears had to endure. It is necessary, and indeed a duty, to honour their memory, for whenever memory fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it!”
In the homily, Pope Bergoglio added “faced with the tragic events of human history we can feel crushed at times, asking ourselves, ‘Why?’. Humanity’s evil can appear in the world like an abyss, a great void: empty of love, empty of goodness, empty of life. And so we ask: how can we fill this abyss? For us it is impossible; only God can fill this emptiness that evil brings to our hearts and to human history. It is Jesus, God made man, who died on the Cross and who fills the abyss of sin with the depth of his mercy.”
At the end of the celebration, the Pope delivered a message dedicated to the centenary of the genocide. The message reads “It is the responsibility not only of the Armenian people and the universal Church to recall all that has taken place, but of the entire human family, so that the warnings from this tragedy will protect us from falling into a similar horror, which offends against God and human dignity. Today too, in fact, these conflicts at times degenerate into unjustifiable violence, stirred up by exploiting ethnic and religious differences. All who are Heads of State and of International Organizations are called to oppose such crimes with a firm sense of duty, without ceding to ambiguity or compromise.”
“May this sorrowful anniversary become for all an occasion of humble and sincere reflection, and may every heart be open to forgiveness, which is the source of peace and renewed hope... May God grant that the people of Armenia and Turkey take up again the path of reconciliation, and may peace also spring forth in Nagorno Karabakh”, (self-proclaimed independent republic of Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus).
“For us Christians, may this be above all a time of deep prayer. Through the redemptive power of Christ’s sacrifice, may the blood which has been shed bring about the miracle of the full unity of his disciples. In particular, may it strengthen the bonds of fraternal friendship which already unite the Catholic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church. The witness of many defenceless brothers and sisters who sacrificed their lives for the faith unites the diverse confessions: it is the ecumenism of blood, which led Saint John Paul II to celebrate all the martyrs of the twentieth century together during the Jubilee of 2000.”
The tragedy of the Armenian people began in what was then the Ottoman Empire, one hundred years ago, in the night between 23 and 24 April 1915, when the most prominent Armenian families in Constantinople were arrested. In just one month, more than one thousand Armenian intellectuals, including journalists, writers, poets, and even members of parliament, were deported to the interior of Anatolia, but were massacred en route.
Arrests and deportations were largely instigated by the “Young Turk” party. Armenian families were forced to leave their homes and belongings and marched into the desert: hundreds of thousands of them perished from hunger, illness or exhaustion. Accounts of this tragic episode, gathered from the precious testimony of survivors, are truly heart-breaking. The death marches were organised under the supervision of German Army officers who were allied with the Turkish Army. Hundreds of thousands more Armenians were massacred by the Kurdish militia and the Turkish army. Photographs secretly taken by Armin T. Wegner are an eloquent testimony of those events. The scale of the selective deportation program leaves little doubt as to the fact that the Armenians were the victims of the first modern genocide, even though the topic has assumed politico-diplomatic relevance since Turkey not only refuses to accept the term “genocide” to describe the events, but formally protests against all states that use the term, maintaining that the those killed – not just Armenians – numbered “less” than 500 thousand, killed by the war or dying of hunger.
Officially, the Armenian Genocide has been more or less explicitly recognised by the parliamentary assemblies of 22 nations, including Russia, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and Argentina.
