Pope Wants to Visit Armenia

[Azat]

Here is an article I found in LATimes this weekend.

 

I think this is great news for Armenia as a whole. http://www.latimes.com/wires/20010218/tCB00V0613.html

[Azat]

I found some more information about the Pope and Armenia. Here is the link and the text.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010217/w...menia_dc_1.html

 

Pope Remembers Armenian Martyrdom on Anniversary

 

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul (news - web sites) paid homage to the Armenian church's history of martyrdom on its 1,700th anniversary on Saturday and said the world should not forget the country's bloody history.

 

``The whole Armenian culture and spirituality has been pervaded by boldness characterized by the supreme sign of giving one's life in martyrdom,'' he wrote in an apostolic letter to mark the anniversary.

 

The Pope specifically mentioned ``unheard-of violence'' in 1915 -- the beginning of an eight-year period in which Armenia says 1.5 million people were killed by Ottoman Turkish armies.

 

``It is a memory which must not be forgotten,'' the 80-year-old Pontiff said, although he stopped short of mentioning Turkey or using the word ``genocide.''

 

Turkey denies the charge of genocide and says thousands of Armenians may have been victims of the Russo-Turkish war raging at the time.

 

Armenia was the first organized state to adopt Christianity as a state religion, when King Trdat III proclaimed it a Christian country in 301, 36 years before the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.

 

The Armenian Apostolic Church is one of the so-called Ancient Churches of the East that split from Byzantine Christianity before the Great Schism of 1054, which divided the Eastern and Western Churches.

 

Rome and the Armenian Church maintain good relations and the Pope has been invited to go to Armenia later this year by the church's leader Garegin II.

 

On Sunday the Pontiff will lead a mass at St. Peter's Basilica to mark the Armenian anniversary.