At 12:15pm today, the Holy Father received in audience the Patriarchal Synod of the Armenian-Catholic Church which is meeting in Rome. The members of this Synod will participate in a special celebration that will be held this coming Sunday in the Vatican Basilica.
Your Beatitudes,
Your Excellencies!
I greet you fraternally and I wish to thank you for this meeting, which is taking place a few days prior to the celebration next Sunday in the Vatican Basilica. Offering a prayer of Christian support for our brothers and sisters among your beloved people, who have fallen victim over the past hundred years. Let us invoke Divine Mercy, that we may all find help, in our love for the truth and for justice, to heal every wound and to hasten concrete gestures of reconciliation and peace among the nations who still cannot manage to achieve a regional consensus as to the reading of such sad events.
In and through you, I greet the priests, the religious men and women, the seminarians and the faithful of the Armenian Catholic Church; I know that many of them have accompanied you during these days here in Rome, and that many more will be spiritually united to us, from countries in the diaspora such as the United States, Latin America, Europe, Russia, Ukraine ... all the way to Madrepatria. I think with sadness in particular of those zones, like that of Aleppo - the Bishop called it the martyr city - which one hundred years ago was itself a safe harbour for the few survivors. Those regions, in these most recent times, have seen the permanence of Christians, not only Armenians, in danger.
Your people, who tradition recognizes as the first to convert to Christianity in 301AD, has a two-thousand-year history and possesses an admirable history of spirituality and culture, combined with an ability to recover from many persecutions and trials which you have had to endure. I invite you to always cultivate a sense of thanksgiving to the Lord, for having been capable of maintaining your faithfulness to Him even in the most difficult of times. It is also important to ask God for the gift of wisdom of heart: the commemoration of the victims of one hundred years ago in fact places us before the clouds of the mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of sin). It cannot be understood in any other way.
As the gospel says, from the depths of the human heart the darkest of forces can lash out, forces capable even of the systematic annihilation of our brother, of considering him as an enemy, an adversary or even as an individual devoid of human dignity itself. But for believers, the question of evil perpetrated by man also introduces the mystery of participation in the redemptive Passion: more than a few of the sons and daughters of the Armenian nation were able to pronounce the name of Christ even at the point of shedding their blood or of dying of starvation in the interminable exile to which they were forced.
The pages of the suffering history of your people continue, in a certain sense, the passion of Jesus, but in each case there is the seed of the Resurrection. Do not fail in your pastoral commitment to teach the faithful to read the signs of the times with new eyes, in order to be able to say every day: my people are not only those who suffer for Christ, but above all they are those who are risen in Him. This is the reason why it is important to remember the past, but also to be able to draw from it new blood with which to feed the present with the joyful proclamation of the gospel and with the witness of charity. I encourage you to support the journey of permanent formation for priests and for consecrated persons. They are your primary collaborators: communion between them and you will be reinforced by the fraternal example that they can perceive between the members of the Synod and with their Patriarch.
Our gratitude extends at this moment to those who worked toward bringing some relief to the drama faced by your ancestors. I especially think of Pope Benedict XV who intervened with the Sultan Mehmet V in order to stop the Armenian massacre. This Pontiff was a great friend of Eastern Christians: he created the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and the Pontifical Oriental Institute, and in 1920, he inscribed the name of Saint Efrem, the Syrian among the Doctors of the Universal Church. I am happy that our meeting is taking place on the eve of the same gesture which I on Sunday I will have the joy of extending to the great figure of Saint Gregory of Narek.
To his intercession, I especially entrust the ecumenical dialogue between the Armenian-Catholic Church and the Armenian-Apostolic Church, remembering the fact that one hundred years ago as it is still today, martyrdom and persecution have already produced the ecumenism of blood. Upon you and upon your faithful I now invoke the blessing of the Lord, while I also ask you not to forget to pray for me! Thank you!
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| Armenian Bishops meeting in Jerusalem c. 1880 |
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
to the Patriarchal Synod of the Armenian-Catholic Church
meeting in Rome
Your Beatitudes,
Your Excellencies!
I greet you fraternally and I wish to thank you for this meeting, which is taking place a few days prior to the celebration next Sunday in the Vatican Basilica. Offering a prayer of Christian support for our brothers and sisters among your beloved people, who have fallen victim over the past hundred years. Let us invoke Divine Mercy, that we may all find help, in our love for the truth and for justice, to heal every wound and to hasten concrete gestures of reconciliation and peace among the nations who still cannot manage to achieve a regional consensus as to the reading of such sad events.
In and through you, I greet the priests, the religious men and women, the seminarians and the faithful of the Armenian Catholic Church; I know that many of them have accompanied you during these days here in Rome, and that many more will be spiritually united to us, from countries in the diaspora such as the United States, Latin America, Europe, Russia, Ukraine ... all the way to Madrepatria. I think with sadness in particular of those zones, like that of Aleppo - the Bishop called it the martyr city - which one hundred years ago was itself a safe harbour for the few survivors. Those regions, in these most recent times, have seen the permanence of Christians, not only Armenians, in danger.
Your people, who tradition recognizes as the first to convert to Christianity in 301AD, has a two-thousand-year history and possesses an admirable history of spirituality and culture, combined with an ability to recover from many persecutions and trials which you have had to endure. I invite you to always cultivate a sense of thanksgiving to the Lord, for having been capable of maintaining your faithfulness to Him even in the most difficult of times. It is also important to ask God for the gift of wisdom of heart: the commemoration of the victims of one hundred years ago in fact places us before the clouds of the mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of sin). It cannot be understood in any other way.
As the gospel says, from the depths of the human heart the darkest of forces can lash out, forces capable even of the systematic annihilation of our brother, of considering him as an enemy, an adversary or even as an individual devoid of human dignity itself. But for believers, the question of evil perpetrated by man also introduces the mystery of participation in the redemptive Passion: more than a few of the sons and daughters of the Armenian nation were able to pronounce the name of Christ even at the point of shedding their blood or of dying of starvation in the interminable exile to which they were forced.
The pages of the suffering history of your people continue, in a certain sense, the passion of Jesus, but in each case there is the seed of the Resurrection. Do not fail in your pastoral commitment to teach the faithful to read the signs of the times with new eyes, in order to be able to say every day: my people are not only those who suffer for Christ, but above all they are those who are risen in Him. This is the reason why it is important to remember the past, but also to be able to draw from it new blood with which to feed the present with the joyful proclamation of the gospel and with the witness of charity. I encourage you to support the journey of permanent formation for priests and for consecrated persons. They are your primary collaborators: communion between them and you will be reinforced by the fraternal example that they can perceive between the members of the Synod and with their Patriarch.
Our gratitude extends at this moment to those who worked toward bringing some relief to the drama faced by your ancestors. I especially think of Pope Benedict XV who intervened with the Sultan Mehmet V in order to stop the Armenian massacre. This Pontiff was a great friend of Eastern Christians: he created the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and the Pontifical Oriental Institute, and in 1920, he inscribed the name of Saint Efrem, the Syrian among the Doctors of the Universal Church. I am happy that our meeting is taking place on the eve of the same gesture which I on Sunday I will have the joy of extending to the great figure of Saint Gregory of Narek.
To his intercession, I especially entrust the ecumenical dialogue between the Armenian-Catholic Church and the Armenian-Apostolic Church, remembering the fact that one hundred years ago as it is still today, martyrdom and persecution have already produced the ecumenism of blood. Upon you and upon your faithful I now invoke the blessing of the Lord, while I also ask you not to forget to pray for me! Thank you!
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