Speaking Truth From Power

"[Catholics must heed the] muffled and forgotten cry of so many of our defenceless brothers and sisters who, on account of their faith in Christ or their ethnic origin, are publicly and ruthlessly put to death -- decapitated, crucified, burned alive -- or forced to leave their homeland."
"It seems that the human family has refused to learn from its mistakes caused by the law of terror, so that today too there are those who attempt to eliminate others with the help of a few and with the complicit silence of others who simply stand by."
Pope Francis, The Holy See

Aram I (C), head of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia speaks with Pope Francis during an Armenian-Rite Mass marking 100 years since the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, yesterday at St Peter’s basilica in Vatican.  — AFP

"He is living dangerously."
"He certainly puts himself in vulnerable positions where he knows that he is making enemies."
"It's consistent with the man's style."
Ronald Boisvert, chair of religion, Concordia University

"The Pope's statement, which is out of touch with both historical facts and legal basis, is simply unacceptable."
"Religious offices are not places through which hatred and animosity are fuelled by unfounded allegations."
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu

At a time when Christianity globally is under siege by the virulent hatred directed at Infidels, Jews and any target that is not Islamic, but they too, Christians have seen their churches destroyed, their sacred objects of veneration defaced and desecrated, while they have been attacked and many killed in an ongoing onslaught by Islamist jihadists waging a global war. And then, of course, there are more elderly such events of historical proportions.

Armenia is noted as the first nation historically to take official steps to adopt Christianity as a state religion. Although it is the Roman Empire that is often spoken of as having transformed itself into a Christian empire when Constantine the Great was influenced by his mother Helena's adoption of Christianity, it was Armenia which in AD301 predated Rome's move to Christianity close to a century earlier.

Pope Francis has now entered the controversy over what he has accurately enough termed "the first genocide of the 20th Century", speaking of the calculated means taken to attempt to exterminate a race of people. At a Vatican mass on Sunday marking the centenary of the Ottoman Empire's vicious campaign against the Armenians, Pope Francis urged other world leaders to recognize the slaughter of Armenians as genocide. Stepping on excitable Turkish toes to become a mass movement.

The Pope made it clear that a failure to speak of the horror that took place against the Armenians in language that clearly and unequivocally describes it for what it represented, sets the stage for other such atrocities to take place, because of the lack of full consequences and the shame it should bring to any civilized country. Turkey has always denied any such description, vehemently insisting that the death of a million-ad-a-half Armenians was simply a consequence of the fallout of war.

"By drawing attention to [the Armenian genocide], I think Francis is underlying that broader concern he has that Christians all over the world today, and in the past, are suffering for their faith. I think he's doing this quite deliberately. ... He's not just shooting off at the mouth. I think that he realizes that he can use the media to promote things that are close to his heart", explained Richard Rymarz, professor of Catholic religious education, St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta.

The persecution of Christians, like the recent murders by an Islamic State branch in Libya of Egyptian Copts, and the slaughter by Al-Shabab of Christian students at dormitories of a college in Kenya, the hollowing out of the ancient Christian presence in Iraq, in Syria, in the Palestinian Territories and elsewhere throughout the Middle East and Africa has made it imperative that someone of the singular stature of Pope Francis speak out without equivocation.

In the presence of Serzh Sargsyan, president of Armenia, who praised the Pope for "calling things by their names", the remarks declared in a mass in the Armenian rite at St. Peter's Basilica, represented a first in Christianity formally and officially striking back against its persecutors. It is predictable that Turkey would be enraged by this very notable and ringing denunciation of an old wound that is now seeing its renascence.

Turkey's embassy to the Vatican cancelled a news conference. In Ankara, diplomats sternly summoned the Vatican ambassador to express their displeasure, releasing a statement that expressed "great disappointment and sadness". In 1948, freshly grappling with the reality of a more recent genocide, the United Nations defined genocide as killing and acts intended to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Such deliberate pathological acts of hatred represent a "great disappointment and sadness" in the degraded depths that human nature can be led to commit to.

Pope Francis stated that the Armenian slaughter represented the first of three "massive and unprecedented" genocides last of the 20th Century, followed by the Nazi Final Solution leading to the Holocaust and by the massive killing machine of  Stalinism. He made mention of other mass killings that had followed: Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia.

Denial is a specialty of arrogant bullies quick to condemn others who have the gall to point to their acts of brutality requiring accountability. The Turks in the Ottoman Empire ruling over the Islamic ummah was well known for their cruelty, even among Arabs whom they also targeted and who were no slouches themselves in fearsome cruelty that seems to come naturally with the territory of tribal enmities and sectarian hatreds.