{"id":17987,"date":"2016-06-26T16:21:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T16:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/?p=17987"},"modified":"2016-06-26T16:21:59","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T16:21:59","slug":"pope-francis-to-armenians-seek-peace-but-never-forget-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/?p=17987","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis to Armenians: Seek Peace, but Never Forget Genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROME \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009d Pope Francis<\/a> on Saturday said that the world should never forget the suffering of the more than one million Armenians who were massacred a century ago during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, lest it \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093fall back into the maelstrom of similar horrors.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d<\/p>\n

But the pope counseled the thousands of people gathered to hear him in Armenia<\/a>\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s capital, Yerevan, to use the healing power of love to transform old wounds into \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093a wellspring of forgiveness and peace,\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d and to seek reconciliation with neighboring T<\/a>urkey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Francis spoke during a prayer service with the leaders of the Armenian Apostolic Church at the end of the second day of a trip during which he called attention to the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians<\/a> by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. On Friday, the pope departed from a prepared text and referred to the massacre as a genocide, a term that Turkey rejects. Historians have called it the first genocide of the 20th century<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Turkey\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s response to the pope\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s use of the word was relatively restrained, with Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli calling the remarks \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093very unfortunate,\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d according to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

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The last time Francis used the term in reference to the mass deaths of Armenians, in Rome in April 2015, Turkey reacted angrily, recalling its ambassador to the Vatican<\/a> and not returning the envoy for 10 months.<\/p>\n

The horror of the genocide still resonates deeply throughout Armenia. After visiting the national memorial<\/a> commemorating the genocide in Yerevan on Saturday morning, the pope signed the guest book, writing, \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093Memory should never be watered-down or forgotten\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d and \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093memory is the source of peace and the future.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d<\/p>\n

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Pope Francis embraced Catholicos Karekin II during a prayer meeting in Republic Square in Yerevan on Saturday.<\/span> Credit<\/span> David Mdzinarishvili\/Reuters <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He reiterated that notion later at a prayer meeting that the Vatican said drew about 50,000 people to Yerevan\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s Republic Square, telling them, \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093Memory, infused with love, becomes capable of setting out on new and unexpected paths, where designs of hatred become projects of reconciliation.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d<\/p>\n

In a video message he sent to the Armenian people ahead of the trip, the pope made clear that he was visiting as \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093messenger of peace.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d His aim, he said, was to \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093support efforts on the way to peace,\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d referring not only to the longstanding strife with Turkey, but also to Armenia\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s dispute with Azerbaijan over the province of Nagorno-Karabakh.<\/p>\n

Those tensions<\/a> crept into Saturday\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s prayer meeting when Catholicos Karekin II, the supreme patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church and spiritual leader of about 93 percent of Armenia\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s population of three million people, accused Azerbaijan of bombing Armenian villages in April and violating a tenuous cease-fire.<\/p>\n

The pope prayed that God \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093grant that the people of Armenia and Turkey take up again the path of reconciliation, and may peace also spring forth in Nagorno-Karabakh.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d<\/p>\n

He urged Armenia\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0084\u00a7s young people to become peacemakers, \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093not content with the status quo, but actively engaged in building the culture of encounter and reconciliation.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d<\/p>\n

At the memorial, the pope laid a wreath of yellow and white flowers, the colors of the Vatican, and spent a long moment in prayer.<\/p>\n

In the guest book, he also wrote, \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u056a\u0093Here I pray, with sorrow in my heart, so that tragedies like this never happen again, so that humanity may never forget and is able to overcome evil with good.\u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0539\u009d<\/p>\n

nytimes.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROME \u0569\u00a7\u0549\u0082-\u0549\u0080\u009d Pope Francis on Saturday said that the world should never forget the suffering of the more than one million Armenians who were massacred a century ago during the final years of the Ottoman […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}