Vatican City, 9 April 2015 (VIS) – This morning Pope Francis
received in audience twenty bishops of the Synod of the Armenian Catholic
Church, who will attend next Sunday's Holy Mass to be celebrated for faithful
of Armenian rite in St. Peter's Basilica, during which St. Gregory of Narek
will be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church.
In the discourse he addressed to the bishops, the Holy
Father remarked that on Sunday they will “raise a prayer of Christian
intercession for the sons and daughters of your beloved people, who were made
victims a hundred years ago”, and invoked Divine Mercy “so that it might help
all, in the love for truth and justice, to heal every wound and to expedite
concrete gestures of reconciliation and peace between the nations that still
have not managed to reach a reasonable consensus on the interpretation of these
sad events”.
Francis greeted all the clergy and lay faithful of the
Armenian Catholic Church, many of whom have accompanied the bishops to Rome in
these days, as well as “those who live in the countries of the diaspora, such
as the United States, Latin America, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, up to the
Motherland”. He added, “I think with particular sadness of those areas, such as
that of Aleppo, that a hundred years ago were a safe haven for the few
survivors. In such regions the stability of Christians, not only Armenians, has
latterly been placed in danger”.
“Your people, whom tradition recognises as the first to
convert to Christianity in 301, has a two thousand-year history and preserves
an admirable patrimony of spirituality and culture, united with a capacity for
recovery amid the many persecutions and trials to which it has been subjected.
I invite you always to cultivate a sentiment of acknowledgement of the Lord,
for having been capable of maintaining fidelity to Him even during the most difficult
periods. It is important, furthermore, to ask of God the gift of wisdom of the
heart: the commemoration of the victims of a hundred years ago indeed places us
before the darkness of the mysterium iniquitatis”.
“As the Gospel tells us, from the depths of the human heart
there may emerge the darkest powers, capable of planning the systematic
annihilation of one's brother, of considering him an enemy, an adversary, or
even without the same human dignity”, he observed. “But for believers the issue
of the evil committed by man also introduces the mystery of participation in
the redemptive Passion: a number of sons and daughters of the Armenian nation
were capable of pronouncing Christ's name to the point of shedding their blood
or of death by starvation during the interminable exodus they were forced to
undertake”.
“The painful pages in the history of your people continue,
in a certain sense, the Passion of Christ, but in each one of these there is
also the germ of the Resurrection. There is no lack of commitment among you,
Pastors, to the education of the lay faithful to enable them to interpret
reality with new eyes, in order to be able to say every day: my people consists
not only of those who suffer for Christ, but above all of those who are risen
in Him. Therefore it is important to remember the past, in order to draw from
it the new lymph needed to nurture the present with the glorious announcement
of the Gospel and with the witness of charity. I encourage you to support the
path of continuing formation of priests and consecrated persons. They are your
first collaborators; the communion between them and you will be strengthened by
the exemplary fraternity they may observe in the Synod and with the Patriarch”.
The Pope expressed his gratitude to those who made efforts
to alleviate the sufferings of their ancestors, making special reference to
Pope Benedict XV “who intervened before the Sultan Mehmet V to bring an end to
the massacre of the Armenians”, and who was “a great friend of the Christian
Orient: he established the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and the
Pontifical Oriental Institute, and in 1920 he inscribed St. Ephrem the Syrian
among the Doctors of the Universal Church”. Francis continued, “I am pleased
that our meeting takes place on the eve of the same gesture I will have the
pleasure of performing on Sunday regarding the great figure of St. Gregory of
Narek”.
“To his intercession, I entrust in particular the ecumenical
dialogue between the Catholic Armenian Church and the Armenian Apostolic
Church, aware of the fact that the 'ecumenism of blood' has already been
achieved through the martyrdom and persecution that took place one hundred
years ago”, he concluded. “I now invoke the Lord's blessing upon you and your
faithful, and I ask you not to forget to pray for me”.
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