Angered Turkey recalls its ambassador to the Vatican
Turkey recalled on Sunday its ambassador to the Vatican for consultation after Pope Francis called the killings of Armenians during World War I as "the first genocide of the 20th century." "The statement made by Pope Francis on April 12 at St. Peter Basilica regarding the 1915 events is devoid of any historical or legal facts," Turkish Foreign ministry said in a statement released on Sunday on its official website. Speaking at a mass in the Armenian Catholic rite in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis used the world ‘genocide’ to describe the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey a century ago. “In the past century our human family had lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies. The first, which is widely considered ‘the first genocide of the 20th century’, struck your own Armenian people,” Pope Francis said. The pointiff’s speech angered Turkey which immediately demanded explanations from the Vatican and later recalled its ambassador to the Vatican.
