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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