Mass in Rome Marks Armenian Massacre
Monsignor Hopes World Comes to Recognize Genocide

ICC Note: All Christians should remember the massacre of the Armenians, in which about 1.5 million Armenians, who were mostly Christians, were brutally killed by the Muslim Ottoman Turks.

By Robert Cheaib
4/25/08 ROME/ARMENIA (Zenit.org) – A Mass in Rome celebrated by the rector of the Pontifical Armenian College was among many events marking the 93rd anniversary of the slaughter of thousands of Armenians.

Monsignor Hovsep Kelekian celebrated the Mass in the Armenian church of St. Nicholas of Tolentine.

He lamented the lack of an official international recognition of the “‘metz yeghern (great calamity) of the genocide” and expressed his hope that “the genocide of the Armenian people be recognized by the whole world” because “it is a fact.”

In 1915 and the following years, vast numbers of Armenians were killed within the Ottoman Empire as it broke apart. April 24, the day the massacre began, is marked as Genocide Day in Armenia. The massacre began that day when hundreds of intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, journalists, priests and other representatives of the Armenian culture and politics were arrested and eventually killed.

“We have gathered today to honor our martyrs and give thanks to our relatives who gave us this life we live today,” Monsignor Kelekian said. “We hope that we can faithfully transmit to our descendants what we have inherited — our faith and our Armenian culture.”

After the Mass, prayers were said before the Khatc’kar memorial erected in 2006 in memory of the victims.

The memorial Mass for the some 1.5 million victims was one of the events of the awareness campaign led by the council of the Armenian community of Rome.
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L’Osservatore Romano noted that 22 countries recognize the massacre as genocide. Turkey denies that the killings were a systematic “genocide” and considers it a crime to use that term to refer to the event… [Go To Full Story]