Posted on 04/01/2015 8:26:37 AM PDT by MNDude
ROME — One week after Easter Sunday, Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate a service in the Armenian Catholic rite to commemorate the 100th anniversary of a mass killing of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century that the pontiff defined two years ago as the “first genocide of the modern era.”
In a time of mounting anti-Christian violence in various corners of the Middle East, the pope’s act is likely to take on more than merely historical interest.
The April 12 papal liturgy is part of a broader campaign by Armenians to keep the memory of their suffering alive, which will feature the ringing of bells in Armenian churches around the world on April 23 at 19:15 (7:15 p.m.), the hour chosen to symbolically recall the year 1915. Bells will sound everywhere but Turkey, where the small number of churches still in operation will remain silent.
Some 80 years before that, in September of 1915, Pope Benedict XV was the only sovereign to publicly intervene in favor of the Armenians. He sent a letter to Sultan Mohammed V in which he highlighted the seriousness of the massacres and asked, in vain, for them to stop. According to the Vatican’s files, other letters would follow with the same results.
One of the reasons it’s difficult for modern Turkey to recognize the genocide, Tosatti said, is the fact that the new Turkish state, created in 1923, has Armenian blood in its founding stones.
(Excerpt) Read more at cruxnow.com ...
Screw the Turks, it’s time we stopped pussyfooting around the topic of the Armenian genocide.
CC
Had a friend (Armenian) whose last name I thought was Turkish and when I asked him if it was Turkish, he went ballistic!
Cristos Haryal E Maralotz
Obama and Kerry are outraged. Remember the Crusades a thousand years ago???
920...............
lol
So what if they get mad? They’re mad over everything already. Tell ‘em to go pound sand.
<[p>I never could understand why the Turks don’t say, “That was done under the Ottomans. We overthrew them, and don’t do that any more.”
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