Close watch on Pope Francis’ Armenian mass

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis will today declare a little- known 10th-century Armenian mystic a doctor of the church, one of the highest honors a pope can bestow. More attention, though, is likely to be on whether Francis utters the word “genocide” during his homily.

Francis is marking the 100th anniversary of the killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire by celebrating a mass in the Armenian Catholic rite in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Armenian patriarch, Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, will concelebrate and the mass will be attended by Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

It’s a big deal for the Armenians, who in the run-up to the centenary have been campaigning for greater recognition that the slaughter constituted genocide. It’s also a big deal for Turkey, which has long denied that the deaths constituted genocide, insisted that the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

Francis avoided the word on Thursday when he met the visiting Armenian church delegation, but said that what transpired 100 years ago involved men “who were capable of systematically planning the annihilation of their brothers.”

“Let us invoke divine mercy so that for the love of truth and justice, we can heal every wound and bring about concrete gestures of peace and reconciliation between two nations that are still unable to come to a reasonable consensus on this sad event,” he said.