Pope infuriates Turkey by describing mass killings of Armenians 100 years ago as 'genocide'

Pope Francis has angered the Turkish government by describing the mass-murders of up to 1.5million Armenians in 1915 as 'the first genocide of the 20th century'. The pontiff made the comments at a 100th anniversary Mass on Sunday, prompting Turkey to summon the Holy See's ambassador in Ankara in protest. Turkey told the Vatican ambassador it was 'deeply sorry and disappointed' in Pope Francis, adding that his comments had caused a 'problem of trust'.

While Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in clashes with Ottoman soldiers beginning in 1915, when Armenia was part of the empire ruled from Istanbul, it denies that the victims reached the estimated 1.5million and that this amounted to genocide. Today was the first time a pope has publicly used 'genocide' to describe the massacre, although it is a term used by many European and South American governments.
In 2001, Pope John Paul II and Armenian Apostolic Church Supreme Patriarch Kerekin II called it 'the first genocide of the 20th century' in a joint written statement. Francis, who has disregarded many aspects of protocol since becoming pope two years ago, uttered the phrase during a private meeting at the Vatican with an Armenian delegation in 2013, prompting a strong protest from Ankara. As the archbishop of Buenos Aires before becoming the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, Jorge Maria Bergoglio had already publicly characterised the mass killings as genocide.