CWN - The Armenian genocide of 1915 “places before us the darkness of the mysterium iniquitatis," Pope Francis said as he met on April 9 with a group of bishops of the Armenian Catholic Church.
The Armenian bishops were in Rome for the April 11 ceremony in which the Pontiff will proclaim St. Gregory of Narek as a doctor of the Church. The Pope prayed that this ceremony, taking place on the feast of Divine Mercy, might “heal every wound and to expedite concrete gestures of reconciliation and peace between the nations that still have not managed to reach a reasonable consensus on the interpretation of these sad events.”
The Pope paid tribute to the Armenian people, whose conversion to Christianity in 301 marked the beginning of a long and proud history that gives today’s Christians “an admirable patrimony of spirituality and culture.” But he remarked that today some of the Armenian Christians living in the diaspora are once again in danger, citing particularly those in places like Aleppo, Syria, “that a hundred years ago were a safe haven for the few survivors” of the genocide perpetrated by Turkish rulers.
Pope Francis expressed a keen interest in ecumenical talks between the Catholic Armenian Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church, “aware of the fact that the 'ecumenism of blood' has already been achieved through the martyrdom and persecution that took place one hundred years ago.”
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