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Pope Francis arrives to celebrates an Armenian-Rite Mass on the occasion of the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican.(Photo: Gregorio Borgia, AP)
Pope Francis has called the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians the 'first genocide of the 20th century."
The pontiff was speaking Sunday at the beginning of a Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, attended by dignitaries including Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, to mark 100 years since the start of the killings.
"In the past century our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies," Francis said, in a message to the Armenian faithful.
"The first, which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the twentieth century,' struck your own Armenian people, the first Christian nation, as well as Catholic and Orthodox Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greeks," he said, citing a September 2001 declaration signed by St. John Paul II and Armenian church leader Karenkin II that described the deaths as genocide.
The pontiff also referred to the Holocaust and Stalinism, and mass killings in countries including Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia.
Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II, left, attends a papal mass for Armenian Catholics marking 100 years since the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, on April 12, 2015 at St Peter's basilica in Vatican.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Andreas Solaro, AFP/Getty Images)
Armenians have long campaigned for recognition that the killings, which happened between 1915 and 1917 under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, constituted genocide.
Armenia — which formally marks the killings on April 24 — and a number of historians say up to 1.5 million people died.
The pope's words risk straining relations with Turkey, which denies the killings were genocide and argues that the number of deaths have been inflated, and the people who died were victims of civil war and unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
In a message to all Armenians, the pope said: "A century has passed since that horrific massacre which was a true martyrdom of your people, in which many innocent people died as confessors and martyrs for the name of Christ.
"Even today, there is not an Armenian family untouched by the loss of loved ones due to that tragedy: it truly was Metz Yeghern, the 'Great Evil', as it is known by Armenians."
The killings are recognized as genocide by a number of countries around the world, but Turkey's allies Italy and the United States have avoided using the contentious term, which the United Nations has defined as acts intended to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.
The pope also pronounced St. Gregory of Narek — a 10th-century Armenian monk and mystic — a doctor of the church, a title which has been given to just 35 other people.
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