What was intended as a classroom exploration of the freedom of thought has turned into a mini-clash of civilisations.

Ten days later, Paty was killed, allegedly by a Russian-born teenager of Chechen heritage, sending an electric shock into France's long debate about secularism, or laïcité.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, responded by saying France would not "renounce the caricatures".

Since then Macron has been described as mentally ill by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; his ambassador to Pakistan has been summoned to condemn incitement of Islamophobia; and from Sana'a to Riyadh he has become a one-man axis of evil. French products are the subject of a boycott. Le Train Bleu restaurant in Doha, "a quintessential Parisian dining experience" in Qatar, is for instance hurriedly re-sourcing its products.

It would be easy to think that Macron, facing record Covid infections, might look at his in-tray and back off.

But he appears to have done the opposite, ringing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, with the Chechen origins of Paty's alleged assailant in mind, to urge him to redouble Russia's efforts to cooperate on terrorism. Macron has long sought a reset with Moscow by joining forces against terrorism.

The call in some accounts took the form of a lecture, and in others an appeal to cooperate more closely in a common cause.

Either way this is not a fight Macron is likely to abandon. Domestically, he faces the first round of the French presidential elections in April 2022, and his challenge will come from the security-minded right, either the centre-right Les Républicains or the far-right Marine Le Pen, with whom he is neck and neck in the polls. His net disapproval rating as president is -24%.

His calculation will be that so long as he makes the final round, the left as before has nowhere else to go. Being tough on Islamist separatism, and paying a price globally, hardly wounds him with waverers on the right.

But to diminish his conflict with extremism into a narrow calculation of personal political advantage is to misunderstand his intellectual journey on secularism in office, and the way in which the issue is central to his foreign policy outlook including his attitude to Turkey, Russia, Nato and the Middle East.

By raising the stakes, and keeping them high, Macron is also trying to make others recognise they cannot stay neutral.

Macron, after all, had tackled the debate about Islamist extremism before Paty's death in his speech on 2 October on secularism - an hour-long address in which he attempted to be nuanced on how to integrate Islam and French secularism. It contained a number of proposals to regulate imams and mosques.

In the passage has proved most provocative in Turkey, he said: "Islam is a religion that is experiencing a crisis across the world," in reference to Islamic State jihadism and also Wahhabism, the Saudi extremist ideology, and Salafism. "We don't believe in political Islam that is not compatible with stability and peace in the world."

Islamic separatism, which Macron describes as a deviation of Islam, is "a conscious, theorised, politico-religious project, which is materialised by repeated discrepancies with the values of the republic, which often results in the creation of a counter-society and whose manifestations are the dropping out of school of children, the development of sports, cultural and communal practices which are the pretext for the teaching of principles which do not conform to the laws of the republic".

There were also balancing passages about the state as guarantor of the freedom of religion, economic disenfranchisement, and the French colonial legacy.

A complex speech such as this does not take long to be distorted and become a source of grievance abroad, especially in Turkey, since as many as half of the imams in France are Turkish.

But more importantly, Turkey is already in a number of disputes with France. Continue reading

During his Angelus address on Sunday Francis said he "follows with concern the tensions in the eastern Mediterranean." Avoiding mentioning the nations involved, he prayed for the "instability" in the area.

"I appeal for constructive dialogue and respect for international law in order to resolve the conflicts that threaten the peace of the peoples of that region," the Pope added.

At present Greece's government is discussing plans to buy new military aircraft from France while Turkey is moving to explore for hydrocarbons in waters in the eastern Mediterranean that Athens claims to own.

Tensions are escalating between Greece and Turkey over what proportion of the Mediterranean sea can be judged to belong to each of the two nations.

At stake is potentially vast reserves of oil and natural gas in the region - something other Mediterranean countries have already begun to profit from.

Turkey's push in the eastern Mediterranean is bringing regional countries and the European Union together in opposition, with France's leaders eager to step in.

Last week, fighter aircraft from France and the United Arab Emirates joined the Hellenic armed forces for joint military exercises based out of Souda Naval Base on Crete.

Relations between Greece and Turkey have been strained for many decades.

The increased economic importance of maritime resources has led to military threats from both sides.

The two countries recently signed maritime agreements - Turkey with Libya and Greece with Egypt - outlining clashing interpretations of the border between the two territories.

Military maneuvers by both countries have continued to escalate the situation.

Two weeks ago Greek and Turkish frigates shadowing a Turkish survey ship, collided.

Last week Turkish F-16 jets prevented six Greek F-16s entering an area where Turkey was operating.

Although both Greece and Turkey are NATO members, NATO been unable to resolve the issues between them so far.

The EU says Turkey could face economic and diplomatic sanctions unless progress is made in reducing tensions.

A council of foreign ministers have reportedly agreed to a draft set of sanctions.

On 30 August, Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, called France and Turkey's leaders "greedy and incompetent".

The Turkish foreign affairs minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu also said if Greece expands its maritime borders in the Aegean Sea, this will be a cause for war.

Source

• Al-Monitor
• The Tablet
• Middle East Monitor

They have repeatedly accused Turkey of 'weaponizing water' since its military takeover of the region in October 2019.

Those especially affected are those living in the north of Syria. The past few years' religious freedom for Kurds, Christians and Yazidis is reportedly again under attack from mainly Turkish military and Syrian Islamist fighters.

Turkey has cut off the water supply to the northern city of Hassakeh and surrounding districts - home to over a million people - for nearly four weeks.

This is risking hundreds of thousands of lives amidst the coronavirus pandemic and soaring temperatures, says the Syrian Democratic Council.

"This is a crime against humanity," says Gabriel Shamoun, the council's vice president.

The present water supply problems began when Turkey and its allies shut down the Alok pumping station. This was the eighth time the water had been cut off since Turkey invaded and took over the Ras al-Ain area last October, observers say.

They aim is to choke the inhabitants of Hassakeh into submission.

The Alok pumping station provides drinking water for around 800,000 people. It is also the main source of water for tankers supplying potable water to tens of thousands of inhabitants. The pumping station became inoperable during the Turkish invasion. So far service has been only partially restored.

According to UNICEF, if people are forced to rely on unsafe water from shallow wells, children and others face increased risk of waterborne diseases. Tankers transporting potable water are expensive and beyond many people's financial means.

Saying Turkey is using water as a "provocation" against the autonomous region, Shamoun is urging the U.S., the United Nations, and Russia (the Syrian government's main backer) to pressure Turkey to restore Hassakeh's water supply.

Kurds and Syriac Christians from this area have been America's chief ally in fighting Islamic State militants in Syria and ending its territorial caliphate.

Last year's U.S. troop pullback and Turkey's subsequent offensive are raising fears of an Islamic State resurgence.

"Using water as a weapon — which is not the first time — is a barbaric act and a flagrant violation of fundamental human rights," says the Damascus-based head of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of Antioch.

"Yet, there has been no response from the international community to this atrocity, despite the constant appeal of the people of the region," he wrote in a letter to the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on 21 August.

People in Afrin and the autonomous northeast were allowed to choose their own faith and religious beliefs until militant Islamists working with the Turkish military invaded Afrin in January 2018.

Since then, Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities have been persecuted; their homes, businesses and properties have been taken over by the troops, and many have been forced to flee. Those who converted to Christianity face particular danger from the Islamists.

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: UCA News

The Hagia Sophia dates to the sixth century, and for almost a millennium was one of the Christian world's most magnificent and well-known churches, carrying forward the traditions of both the Roman and the Byzantine Empires.

It was first converted into a mosque when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, but was then fashioned into a museum by modern Turkey's founding father, Kemal Atatürk, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

Atatürk sought to create a secular Turkey that could flourish in the modern world. That required bridging historical divisions, which meant that the Hagia Sophia would be neither a church nor a mosque.

As a museum, it would attract visitors from around the world, serving as both an embodiment of Turkish history and a symbol of forward-looking cosmopolitanism.

By overturning Atatürk's founding vision in this respect, Erdoğan is trying to signal a fundamental change in direction for the country.

After all, it is not as though Istanbul suffers from a scarcity of massive, magnificent, historically significant mosques. Those designed by the Ottoman master architect Sinan reside just nearby.

For more than a decade, Turkey was on track to adopt democratic reforms and align itself with the rest of Europe, even overhauling its constitution and beginning formal accession negotiations with the European Union in 2005.

The country's transformation at the time was both impressive and deeply inspiring to those of us watching from the outside.

But those hopeful days are gone.

Instead of modernizing and moving closer to the rest of Europe, Turkey under Erdoğan has been sinking into the mire of the Middle East.

This fundamental change has many causes, and cannot be placed at the feet of one man.

The country's official dialogue around the Kurdish question has collapsed, and in the summer of 2016, segments of the military, part of the secretive Gülen movement, attempted to stage a coup.

Once a key ally to Erdoğan, the Gülenists' attempted power grab tilted the country in a decidedly more authoritarian direction.

Erdoğan quickly started centralizing government functions and consolidating his own power with a widespread purge of the state and society, followed by a constitutional amendment establishing a presidential political system.

Complicating matters further, the civil war that has been raging in Syria since 2011 increasingly spilled over the border, dragging Turkey into the conflict in numerous destructive ways.

But, for all its faults and recent disappointments, Turkey is still a country where elections matter, and Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has gradually suffered a loss of popular support. Continue reading

• Carl Bildt was Sweden's foreign minister from 2006 to 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden's EU accession.

The Council, which represents 350 Churches and over 500 million Christians, says the move would sow division.

The Hagia Sophia has been a museum since 1934.

The president announced his decision last Friday after a court annulled the Hagia Sophia's museum status.

The building was constructed 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453.

It was converted to a museum on the orders of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of modern, secular Turkey.

Religious services have been banned at the Hagia Sophia since it became a museum, but devout Muslims have long campaigned for worship to be allowed.

The Geneva-based World Council of Churches says it feels "grief and dismay" at Erdogan's decision.

"By deciding to convert the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque you have reversed that positive sign of Turkey's openness and changed it to a sign of exclusion and division," Ioan Sauca, interim general secretary, wrote.

The decision "will inevitably create uncertainties, suspicions and mistrust, undermining all our efforts to bring people of different faiths together at the table of dialogue and co-operation.

"In the interests of promoting mutual understanding, respect, dialogue and co-operation, and avoiding cultivating old animosities and divisions, we urgently appeal to you to reconsider and reverse your decision."

The Association for the Protection of Historic Monuments and the Environment argued that the building had been the private property of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed, responsible for turning the church into a mosque.

The issue has highlighted the clash between those who want Turkey to remain secular, and President Erdogan's conservative religious base.

Erdogan says Turkey has exercised its sovereign right in converting the building back to a mosque. The first Muslim prayers would be held on 24 July.

"Like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be wide open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims," he says.

Today Turkey had "435 churches and synagogues open for worship", while "few buildings our ancestors built in Eastern Europe and Balkans stand today."

Unesco has expressed deep regret at the move and called for Turkey to open dialogue "without delay."

The head of the Eastern Orthodox Church has condemned the move, saying it is an "open provocation to the civilised world."

The Church in Russia, home to the world's largest Orthodox Christian community, immediately expressed regret that the Turkish court had not taken its concerns into account when ruling on Hagia Sophia.

And Turkey's most famous author, Orhan Pamuk, told the BBC: "There are millions of secular Turks like me who are crying against this but their voices are not heard."

Source

• BBC
• Image: Anadolu Agency

Turkey, which is a majority-Muslim country, says China's mass repression of its Uighur Muslim ethnic minority is a "great shame for humanity". Read more

Erdoğan was returning a visit Francis made to Turkey in 2014.

Vatican sources say that at the meeting Francis and Erdoğan discussed "bilateral relations between the Holy See and Turkey, the situation within the country and the condition of the Catholic community, Turkey's role in receiving refugees and the challenges this poses".

They also discussed "the situation in the Middle East, with particular reference to the status of Jerusalem, highlighting the need to promote peace and stability in the region through dialogue and negotiation, with respect for human rights and international law."

Both Erdogan and Francis are opposed to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

While they were meeting, Kurdish protestors holding signs calling Turkey a state-sponsor of terrorism tried to enter St. Peter's Square, but police prevented them from doing so.

They were protesting about Turkey's military offensive on Kurdish areas in northern Syria, which began on 20 January, and has resulted in civilian casualties.

Reports say several protesters also held signs calling for the release of Abdullah Öcalan. Öcalan is a Kurdish nationalist leader who has been jailed in Turkey since 1999.

A group of international press freedom groups also expressed concern about the Pope's meeting with Erdoğan. They released an open letter calling on the pope to bring up Turkey's crackdown on independent journalists with Erdoğan.

Signatories included the International Press Institute, European Center for Press and Media Freedom, PEN International, and Reporters without Borders.

• RadioFreeEurope RadioLiberty
• CruxNow
• Reuters
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: RFE/RL

Yet Santa Claus was a real person who is otherwise known as St Nicholas. Revered for his gift-giving and aid to the poor, the 4th-century saint is behind the legend of Santa Claus.

Regardless of whether people believe or otherwise, archaeologists say they think they have found the original Santa Claus's grave under the almost fully intact temple and burial grounds of Saint Nicholas in Antalya, Turkey.

"We have obtained very good results but the real work starts now," says Cemil Karabayram, the director of surveying and monuments in Antalya.

"We will reach into the ground and maybe we will find the untouched body of Saint Nicholas."

Karabayram, who is also the head of Antalya's Monument Authority, says the shrine was discovered during electronic surveys that showed gaps beneath the church.

"We believe this shrine has not been damaged at all, but it is quite difficult to get to it as there are mosaics on the floor," he says.

He says he is very optimistic about uncovering Saint Nicholas's remains, but warns it will take some time to scale each tile one by one and remove them as a whole in a mould.

In recent years, the church in Demre district in Antalya, near his birthplace, has been restored and draws many visitors.

Demre is built on the ruins of Myra, the city where Saint Nicholas, revered by many denominations in Christianity, is believed to have lived.

Source

• The Guardian
• The Telegraph
• Image: Orthodox Christian Network

The passionate reaction is because The Promise, a $100-million movie starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, has provoked those who deny that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred between 1915 and 1923 by the Ottoman Empire or that the deaths of Armenians were the result of a policy of genocide.

Thousands, many of them in Turkey, have flocked to IMDb to rate the film poorly.

Though many countries and most historians call the mass killings genocide, Turkey has aggressively refused that label.

Yet that wasn't the most audacious sabotage of The Promise, a passion project of the late billionaire investor and former MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian.

In March, just a few weeks before The Promise was to open, a curiously similar-looking film called The Ottoman Lieutenant appeared.

Another sweeping romance set during the same era and with a few stars of its own, including Ben Kingsley and Josh Hartnett, The Ottoman Lieutenant seemed designed to be confused with The Promise.

But it was made by Turkish producers and instead broadcast Turkey's version of the events — that the Armenians were merely collateral damage in World War I.

It was the Turkish knockoff version of The Promise, minus the genocide.

"It was like a reverse mirror image of us," said Terry George, director and co-writer of The Promise.

George, the Irish filmmaker, has some experience in navigating the sensitivities around genocide having previously written and directed 2004's Hotel Rwanda, about the early '90s Rwandan genocide. Continue reading

• Jake Coyle is a film writer and critic.

The agreement aimed to stem the flow of migrants and refugees seeking protection in Europe.

Caritas says the agreement has left thousands of vulnerable people stranded in degrading conditions in Greece.

Others are being forced to take dangerous alternative routes as they seek EU protection.

The agreement is financially beneficial to Turkey.

Caritas says Ankara agreed to stop asylum seekers from crossing by sea to the Greek islands in return for three billion euros in aid.

This money was to deal with the three million Syrian refugees who are living in Turkey.

Caritas says the aim was to return Syrian refugees who had reached the Greek islands to Turkey.

Syrian asylum seekers in Turkey were to be resettled in the EU.

"Today, thousands find themselves in a limbo," Leïla Bodeux of Caritas says.

The agreement "basically tries to fast-track returns of migrants from Europe to Turkey".

At the same time, the situation for refugees and migrants who have reached Greece is "dire and horrendous" she says.

Health is poor, fatal tent fires have occurred when people have been trying to keep warm and people are anxious.

Women and children are particularly vulnerable, she says.

Source

• Vatican Radio
• Image: NBC News

The church in northern Turkey's Giresun province used to serve a large community.

It was abandoned following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

The exchange involved about two million people (around 1.3 million Anatolian Greeks living in Turkey and 500,000 Muslims living in Greece).

Few people live in the area now.

"There were some other churches around but this one is the only one that stands still," said Kemal Gürgenci, the head of the provincial and culture directorate.

Although the family cannot restore the building, they say the do their best to preserve and protect its beautiful interior and iconography

The church was built in the mid 1800's.

Source

• ThePappasPost
• Daily Sabbah
• Image: Daily Sabbah

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 to the killings by their Armenian description as the Metz Yeghérn, or the "Great Evil".

He then continued: "Sadly, that tragedy - that genocide-was the first of the deplorable series of catastrophes of the past century, made possible by twisted racial, ideological or religious aims that darkened the minds of the tormentors even to the point of planning the annihilation of entire peoples."

In 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.

Last year, Francis used the word "genocide" to describe this event.

This infuriated Turkey at the time.

Ankara recalled its ambassador to the Vatican and kept him away for 10 months

Turkey waited more than 24 hours to react to the Pope's latest remark.

"Of course the Pope's statement is very unfortunate," Turkey's deputy prime minister Nurettin Canikli told reporters.

"It is unfortunately possible to see all the reflections and traces of Crusader mentality in the actions of papacy and the Pope."

The Vatican responded by saying "the Pope is on no crusade".

Spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, said: "He is not trying to organise wars or build walls but he wants to build bridges."

"He has not said a word against the Turkish people."

The word "genocide" appeared again in a joint declaration signed by Francis and the head of the Armenian Church at the end of the Pope's visit.

On his flight back from Armenia, Francis said he had not used the word with "offensive intent".

Rather, he said, he had used the term "objectively".

Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One.

Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One.

But it contests the figures and denies that the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.

It also says many Muslim Turks perished at that time.

Sources

• Reuters
• Reuters
• National Catholic Reporter
• NPR
• Crux
• Image: Armenpress

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 its indigenous populations and deliberately destroying millennia-old Christian heritage.

Armenians were martyred also because of their Christian faith and as recently as last year the Armenian Apostolic Church canonised all the victims of the genocide as saints.

It is tragic that the cycle of genocide continues to this day in various parts of the world. Part of the reason behind it is the impunity of the past crimes and the unwillingness of the international community to undertake meaningful measure to stop it.

Only by fully facing the tragedies of the past and dealing with them in a truthful and just manner can the humanity move forward.

These ideas are enshrined in the work of a 10th-century Armenian monk, St Gregory of Narek, whom Pope Francis proclaimed a Doctor of the Church for his invaluable contributions towards the Christian theology and community at-large.

St Gregory of Narek is best-known for his work the Book of Lamentations (also called Book of Prayers), which outlines profound ideas about the purification and sanctification of humanity.

The book is a monologue structured as a prayer to God "from the depths of the heart" in which St Gregory ascribes to himself all possible sins, exposing himself and confessing to God.

The saint suggests a way of human perfection through repenting to God.

This was a revolutionary idea aimed at dispelling the ignorance of the Middle Ages. Long before Martin Luther, St Gregory advocated direct communication with God. Centuries later this idea was to become the basis of Reformation. Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald, from an article by Vahan Dilanyan, the Assistant to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia.
• Image: Telegraph UK

"[Pope Francis grieved] to learn of the casualties caused by the bombing in Istanbul … and he expresses his prayerful solidarity with all touched by this tragedy," read a telegram to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State.

"His Holiness asks you to convey his spiritual closeness to them, as well as to the personnel assisting the injured."

"Commending the souls of those who have died to the mercy of the Almighty, Pope Francis invokes divine strength and peace upon those who mourn, and upon the entire nation," read the telegram.

Efken Ala, Turkey's interior minister, said the attack that killed four people in the Turkish capital's main shopping street was carried out by the so-called Islamic State.

The attack in Istiklal Street, Istanbul's most popular shopping district, is the fourth bombing in Turkey this year and the second one by Islamist militants.

In January a suicide bomber blew himself up in Istanbul's historic heart, killing 12 German tourists, according to a report by Reuters.

Israel has confirmed that three of its citizens died in the blast. Two of them held dual citizenship with the United States. An Iranian was also killed, Turkish officials have said.

Sources

The Guardian
Catholic World News
Aleteia
Catholic Herald
Reuters
Image: AP/Catholic Herald

They are a mixed bag across more than 2600 kms of borders - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, an Azerbaijan enclave, Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece. And across the Black Sea he has Russia.

Now he has an unofficial neighbour: Daesh, also known as Islamic State. It has been active along Turkey's frontier inside Syria and regards territory it has seized as part of its self-styled caliphate.

It poses a dilemma for President Erdogan. He has 1.5 million refugees on his hands, mainly from Syria as a result of barbaric actions by Daesh. The EU has offered him what some see as a generous bribe to deter the refugees from heading west to Europe.

He has joined the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Daesh, but is his heart really in it even though he has blamed it for killing 100 people at a peace rally in Turkey in October? His air force by all accounts prefers to attack Kurdish targets.

His critics say he tolerates Daesh as being good for business and helping deal with what he sees as his real enemy, the Kurds. But for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Daesh, it is the Kurds who have done more than any other force on the ground in repelling its advances.

David Graeber, a professor at the London School of Economics, thinks he has the answer to eliminate Daesh. Writing in the Guardian, he says:

‘All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria and PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) guerrillas in Iraq and Turkey. But instead the YPG-controlled territory in Syria finds itself placed under a total embargo by Turkey and the PKK forces are under continual bombardment by the Turkish air force. Not only has Erdogan done almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting (Daesh); there is considerable evidence that his government has been at least tacitly aiding (Daesh) itself'. Continue reading

• John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news. This opinion piece was posted on John Menadue's blog.

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 as gypsies, the handicapped and others; the massacres in Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica and Dafur.

Altogether tens of millions were killed or tortured in attempts to exterminate whole peoples and cultures.

But historians generally agree that first great genocide of the modern era - the model, in fact, for some subsequent ones - was "the great crime" of the Ottoman Empire, in which 1 to 1.5 million Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians were killed.

Where, we wonder, was God in all this?

Christians believe God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good - indeed, He is goodness itself - and so never directly intends or causes evil. Human beings, on the other hand, all too often choose evil: individually they commit sins, large or small, and in concert with others they sometimes commit grave atrocities.

Human beings, not God, are responsible for those misdeeds and the terrible effects on innocent victims.

Yet, still we wonder why God permits such things, even if He does not directly will them. One traditional answer (from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas) has been: that even when God allows evils to be perpetrated, He ensures some greater good can come from them.

That can be hard to see at the time - hard, even a century later. But eventually we see the divine hand bringing good out of evil and realize things might otherwise have been even worse. We witness the blood of martyrs seeding the Church and experience divine grace conquering hatred and cruelty with reconciliation and solidarity. As the Portuguese saying goes, God writes straight with crooked lines. Continue reading

Sources

• Archbishop Anthony Fisher, ABC Religion & Ethics
• Image: United Armenian Council

The fact that the church is even standing here — beautiful and steadfast in a place that was only recently the site of ruins — instills a sense of courage, says Armen.

And courage is something that is badly needed in these parts, especially in Diyarbakir.The city is located in southeastern Turkey, deep in the Anatolian mountain region. Diyarbakir is gray, loud and lackluster.

But it does have one special landmark — the stylishly restored St. Giragos Church, located in the Old Town, a labyrinth of crumbling homes and alleys that reverberate with children's shouts as they kick around a soccer ball.

It's a Christian-Armenian church, the first of its kind to be rebuilt and highly symbolic in a city like Diyarbakir.

The builders say that attempts were made to prevent the reconstruction, hinting that they may have been linked to some of the politicians involved in the project. Indeed, some felt provoked by the restoration of the church.

For others, the church is a symbol of a major political shift that has gripped Turkish society, a symbol of a willingness to confront its history.

The church also helps people to remember and reaffirm their true identity. People like Armen.

Armen Demirjan first trained to become a baker, then a truck driver, then a newspaper deliveryman and now as a parish clerk. In his early life, Armen had a different name: Abdulrahim Zarasaln.

But one day he found out that he is really Armenian and that the few members of his family who survived had been forced to convert to Islam. Armen then began a new life — one that consumed a lot of his energy. Continue reading

Source and Image

• Spiegel Online

These resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 Armenians, perhaps 250,000 Assyrian Christians and 350,000 Pontian Greeks.

The Turkish government, a last relic of nineteenth-century nationalism, maintains its odious denial that genocide even occurred.

This is at odds with the mass of historical evidence, now reaching a torrent, confirming the planned extermination of a group of people that was carried out with such brutal success.

What is not well known is the role of doctors in the genocide - another ominous precedent for the Holocaust.

Our knowledge of this comes from the distinguished Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian, who demonstrated that the genocide was largely directed and carried out by doctors, prominent members of the Ittihadist Party who came to power in a coup in 1908.

Medical personnel did not merely supervise proceedings; they were directly involved in the killings, often participating in torture.

The most prominent physicians were Dr Behaeddin Sakir and Dr Mehmett Nazim, who played pivotal roles in the establishment and deployment of the Special Organization units, extermination squads staffed by violent criminals released from prisons to undertake killings.

Sakir worked at one time as the chief physician of Soloniki Municipal Hospital and Nazim - described as "a doctor by profession and not without promise" - in what must be regarded as one of the most misguided appointments in the history of medicine, was the professor of Legal (Ethical) Medicine at Istanbul Medical School.

Utterly unrepentant to the end of his life, Nazim was thought to have been responsible for a million murders. Continue reading

• Robert M Kaplan in ABC Religion & Ethics

Robert M. Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist and author.

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 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 St John Paul II in 2001.

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

But Turkey has always disputed that figure and said the deaths were part of a civil conflict triggered by the First World War.

Continue reading

I came to this conclusion after studying about 2,000 pages, entitled "persecuzioni contra gli Armeni", in both the Archives of the Apostolic Delegation in Constantinople and the Secretary of State in the Vatican Secret Archives for an upcoming book[1], many of them for the first time.[2]

There is no doubt that Eugenio Pacelli (who became Pius XII in 1939) was extremely well informed about this dark chapter of World War I.[3]

From 1914 he was Secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Holy See's Secretariat of State. He became Undersecretary of State when Benedict XV named Cardinal Gasparri as Secretary of State.

In this position he had prime access to all information on the Armenian genocide and indeed we find his characteristic handwriting on several documents dealing with it.

Being responsible for several Papal relief initiatives during the War, he was well-informed about it. In several cases, the Apostolic Delegate in Constantinople, Msgr. Angelo Dolci, addressed Pacelli directly in his letters and reports to the Holy See.[4]

Later on, when Benedict XV appointed Pacelli as Nuncio to Bavaria, Pacelli was involved in a diplomatic intervention to prevent further massacres after the Russian retreat from northeastern Turkey following the Brest-Litovsk treaty.[5]

Indeed, all biographers of Pius XII agree that the wartime diplomacy of Pope Benedict XV served as a model for Pius XII's actions during World War II, when the "Pope of Peace"[6] served as his role model, especially in his stress on the Vatican's "impartiality".[7]

But what did Pius XII learn from his experience with the Armenian genocide? Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet
• Image: World War I in the Middle East