Vatican hits back at Turkey for calling pope ‘crusader’
Reuters/June 26/16
YEREVAN – The Vatican hit back on Sunday at Turkey’s depiction of Pope Francis as having a “Crusader mentality” after he used the word genocide to describe the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a century ago. “The pope is on no crusade. He is not trying to organize wars or build walls but he wants to build bridges,” spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters. “He has not said a word against the Turkish people.”Addressing Armenia’s president, the government and diplomats on Friday, Francis departed from his prepared text to use the word “genocide,” a description that infuriated Turkey when he first used it a year ago. Turkey’s deputy prime minister Nurettin Canikli said on Saturday it was “very unfortunate” the pope had used the word, adding: “It is unfortunately possible to see all the reflections and traces of Crusader mentality in the actions of the papacy and the pope.” Francis, who returns to Rome on Sunday after visiting a monastery near the border with Turkey, first used the word last year in a ceremony at the Vatican. An infuriated Turkey responded by recalling its ambassador to the Vatican and keeping him away for 10 months. Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but 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.On Sunday morning, at the last main event of his three-day trip to Armenia, Francis again made reference to the massacre, paying homage to “the many victims of hatred who suffered and gave their lives for the faith.”Unusually for the pope, he was a guest in a Christian liturgy where someone else called “His Holiness” presided. The “divine liturgy” was presided over by Catholicos Karekin II, head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which split from Rome over a theological dispute in the fifth century and is part of the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
Turkey: Pope’s genocide declaration bears stamp of ‘crusades’ mentality’
AFP, Ankara Sunday, 26 June 2016/Turkey has condemned as “very unfortunate” Pope Francis’s declaration that the mass killings of Armenians a century ago by Ottoman forces amounted to a genocide, saying it bore traces of “the mentality of the Crusades.”“It is not an objective statement that conforms with reality,” Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canlikli said late on Saturday, quoted by the state-run news agency Anadolu. The pope on Friday denounced the World War I killing of Armenians as a genocide, prompting Turkey’s anger. “Sadly this tragedy, this genocide, was the first of the deplorable series of catastrophes of the past century,” the pope said at the presidential palace in Yerevan. Canikli said: “It is possible to see all the hallmarks or reflections of the mentality of the Crusades in the Pope’s activities.”When Francis last used the term in the Vatican in 2015, on the centenary of the killings, Ankara angrily recalled its envoy from the Holy See for nearly a year. The pope on Saturday visited the Armenian genocide memorial in Yerevan but sought to strike a conciliatory tone during evening prayers. “May God bless your future and grant that the people of Armenia and Turkey take up again the path of reconciliation, and may peace also spring forth in Nagorny Karabakh.”
Armenians have long sought international recognition for the World War I killings as genocide. Turkey – the Ottoman Empire’s successor state – argues that it was a collective tragedy in which both Turks and Armenians died.
