Turkey’s deputy prime minister says Pope Francis reflects a “crusader mentality” for once again using the word “genocide” about a 1915 massacre in Armenia. During a visit to Armenia, Francis used the word in a speech. Francis departed from a carefully prepared text to use the word. As the prepared text indicated, Francis first referred Read more
This Sunday Armenians and people of good will around the world will commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide. A century ago millions of men, women and children – including Assyrians and Greeks – were brutally tortured and exterminated upon the direct order and plan of the Ottoman Turkish government, thereby emptying the region of Read more
For many of us who strive to seriously practice faith in Jesus Christ, and to extend that practice out into the marketplace, the political square and society at large, persecution rarely means more than being ridiculed, verbally harassed, and to a certain degree socially and politically marginalized. But for so many other Christians throughout the Read more
Although no date has been set, a Vatican spokesman confirmed Pope Francis is considering a trip to Armenia during the second half of June, a year after causing a diplomatic incident by calling the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians in the early 1900s a genocide. Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the pope’s itinerary hasn’t been Read more
A Catholic report has identified a slow motion genocide happening in West Papua amid a growing Islamisation of the area. The report was compiled by the Brisbane Catholic Justice and Peace Commission’s Shadow Human Rights Fact Finding Mission to West Papua. It came after a visit to West Papua last month by Josephite Sr Susan Read more
The European Parliament has recognised as genocide the Islamic State’s killing of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. This is the first time the European Parliament has acknowledged an ongoing conflict as genocide. Lars Adaktusson, the Swedish MEP who tabled the resolution, said the significance of the move is the obligations that Read more
The twentieth century saw major advances in technology and communications, economy and human rights. It was also the bloodiest century in history. Think of the mass deportations, starvation and extermination of perhaps 14 million people in Stalinist Russia and even more in Maoist China; the Holocaust of 6 million Jews under the Nazis, as well Read more
The Armenian and Assyrian genocide that took place between 1914 and 1923, along with the Pontian Greek mass murders, provided the template for the Holocaust: forced emigration, expulsions, property confiscations, forced labour, public torture and executions, medical experiments, elementary gassings, starvation and death marches. These resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 Armenians, perhaps Read more
When Pope Francis described the killing of more than a million Armenians a century ago as “the first genocide of the 20th century,” he was widely regarded as making a political statement. Certainly that was the view of Turkey, which recalled its ambassador to the Vatican and expressed its “great disappointment and sadness” over the pope’s Read more
Turkey has recalled its envoy to the Vatican after Pope Francis described the mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman rule in World War One as “genocide”. Turkey has reacted with anger to the comment made by the Pope at a service in the Armenian Catholic Rite in Rome on Sunday. Pope Francis said that humanity Read more