International News

VATICAN CITY, (APP/AFP) – Pope Francis set off
for a three-day visit to Armenia Friday, just over a year after he enraged Turkey by using the term genocide to describe the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.
The Argentinian pontiff’s 14th overseas trip since his 2013 election is expected to see him highlight the Vatican’s concern over instability, conflict and the plight of Christians in the war-torn Middle East, which has resulted in his hosts having to welcome tens of thousands of refugees.
But his movements and statements will also be closely followed in Ankara, which rejects the idea that a genocide took place during World War I and has accused international powers of using disputed history as a means of bullying Turkey.
Highlights of the papal trip will include a visit to Armenia’s main
memorial to the 1915-17 killings, a meeting with members of the country’s small Roman Catholic community and the release of two doves in the direction of Mount Ararat from the Khor Virap sanctuary near the border with Turkey.
The 5,160-metre (16,900-feet) high Mount Ararat was Armenian until 1915 and is now located inside Turkey. It features in the Bible as the place where Noah’s Ark supposedly came to rest.
Francis is the second pope to visit Armenia since it re-emerged as an
independent state from the ashes of the Soviet Union.
John Paul II went there in 2001 to attend celebrations marking 1,700 years of the adoption of Christianity in Armenia, which was the first country to have the faith as its state religion.
John Paul was also the first pope to recognise the slaughter of Armenians as genocide, although he did so only in writing.
Francis pronounced the word during a mass at St Peter’s last year, winning great praise from Armenians at the cost of infuriating Turkey, which withdrew its ambassador in protest.