Turkey anger at Pope Francis Armenian ‘genocide’ claim

Many members of the Armenian clergy were at the ceremony

Turkey summoned the Vatican ambassador over Pope Francis’s use of the word “genocide” to describe the mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman rule in WW1.

The foreign ministry reportedly told the envoy it was “disappointed” by the comments, which caused a “problem of trust” between Turkey and the Vatican.

Armenia and many historians say up to 1.5 million people were systematically killed by Ottoman forces in 1915.

Turkey has consistently denied that the killings were genocide.

The Pope’s comments came at a service in Rome to honour a 10th Century mystic, attended by Armenia’s president.

The dispute has continued to sour relations between Armenia and Turkey.

‘Bleeding wound’

The Pope first used the word genocide for the killings two years ago, prompting a fierce protest from Turkey.

At Sunday’s Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite at Peter’s Basilica, he said that humanity had lived through “three massive and unprecedented tragedies” in the last century.

“The first, which is widely considered ‘the first genocide of the 20th Century’, struck your own Armenian people,” he said, in a form of words used by a declaration by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

Pope Francis also referred to the crimes “perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism” and said other genocides had followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia.

He said it was his duty to honour the memories of those who were killed.

“Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the Pope added.

© BBC