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Pope Leo XIII Appealed To Sultan In Vain To Stop An Earlier Massacre

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  • Pope Leo XIII Appealed To Sultan In Vain To Stop An Earlier Massacre

    POPE LEO XIII APPEALED TO SULTAN IN VAIN TO STOP AN EARLIER MASSACRE OF ARMENIANS

    Catholic Insight
    http://www.catholicinsight.com/online/article_1169.shtml
    Aug 23, 2011

    Armenia News reported July 11, 2011 on an appeal by Pope Leo XIII
    (Pope: 1878-1903) to the Turkish sultan to stop the 1894-1896 massacre
    of Armenian Christians. That appeal was recently disclosed by the
    Vatican Archives.

    Following the release of the "Secret Archives" dealing with Armenia,
    a reporter for the Turkish Vatan newspaper interviewed Archbishop
    Sergio Pagano, who is in charge of the Vatican Archives.

    Archbishop Pagano "stressed that back in 1896...Pope Leo XIII called
    on the Sultan to show sympathy and stop the genocide."

    "Pagano said that the documents and information about the Armenian
    genocide from Vatican's secret archives will be published in a separate
    book. He cited several stories from the documents.

    "An eyewitness from Erzurum said, 'I saw how numerous children were
    killed. My niece ran away from home with a two-year-old child on her
    shoulders, but she was shot. When she fell on the ground two soldiers
    came to her and killed her. I saw the killing of our city's spiritual
    leader. They gouged out his eyes, pulled his beard. Before killing him,
    the soldiers forced him to dance."

    Another story was told by a Turkish soldier named Mustafa Suleyman:
    'We entered the Armenian villages and killed them all, without regard
    to gender and age. Kurds who came with us robbed Armenian houses. Many
    old Armenians, disabled people, were hiding in schools located in
    the centre of the city, but we had an order and killed them. Eight
    hundred Armenians were killed and burnt in Geliguzan village. They
    gouged out the eyes of a priest, Fr. Hovhannes; his beard, nose,
    and ears were cut off. I have not killed a single child, even saved
    two of them. I was hiding them in my tent but once I went in I saw
    their bodies dismembered.'

    "Under the orders of bloody Sultan Abdul Hamid over 300,000 Armenians
    were killed in 1894-1896." (The Wanderer, July 21, 2011)

    The massacre of these years is not to be confused with the greater
    Armenian Holocaust which took place during the World War I years,
    when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Obviously, this
    slaughter foreshadowed the larger one in 1915. Both crimes were ignored
    by Europe whose nations were in deadly rivalry with one another.

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