Catholicos Condemns Genocide Before Pope

"The Armenian Weekly", Volume 74, No. 18, May 10, 2007

VATICAN CITY (Reuters)—On May 7, Catholicos Karekin II used the pulpit of the Vatican to condemn the 1915 killing of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, saying the whole world should recognize it as a genocide.

“We Armenians are a people who have survived genocide, and we know well the value of love, brotherhood, friendship, and a secure life,” Karekin II said in a public address during Pope Benedict’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

“Today, many countries of the world recognize and condemn the genocide committed against the Armenian people by Ottoman Turkey,” the head of Armenia’s Apostolic Church added, speaking in English before tens of thousands of people.

Karekin II said he wanted to “appeal to all nations and lands to universally condemn all genocides that have occurred throughout history and those that continue to the present day...”

In his address to Karekin II before the crowd, Benedict spoke of “the severe persecutions suffered by Armenian Christians, especially during the last century,” but did not use the word “genocide.”

Karekin, in his address broadcast live on many religious television stations around the world, said that “the denial of these crimes is an injustice that equals the commission of the same.”

The word “genocide” appeared in a joint statement when Karekin visited the late Pope John Paul in 2000. But the Vatican, which has diplomatic relations with both Armenia and Turkey, has never formally recognized the killings as such.

John Paul visited Armenia in 2001 and prayed at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Dzidzernagapert in Yerevan.

—Philip Pullella