VATICAN CITY, April 12 (UPI) -- On the 100-year anniversary, Pope Francis has called the mass killing of Armenians in what is now Turkey a "genocide."
"In the past century, our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies," the Pope said at a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica. "The first, which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the twentieth century,' struck your own Armenian people," he said. The pope was quoting a declaration made by Pope John Paul II and the head of the Armenian church.