Pope cannot always bring himself to say the Armenian genocide took place.





"Francis also provoked Turkish anxiety in June 2013, when he told a visiting delegation of Armenian Christians that the massacre of Armenians in Turkey last century was "the first genocide of the 20th century." The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was particularly close to the Armenian community of Buenos Aires, such that his successor as Archbishop recently announced that Francis would celebrate a Mass on April 12, 2015, in St. Peter’s Basilica to commemorate the centenary of the start of the massacre. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide. Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the Pope’s genocide remarks were "in no way a formal or public declaration" and therefore didn’t constitute a public assertion that genocide took place. " Source

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