Turkey’s top cleric calls Pope ‘immoral’ for Armenia comments

Turkey’s top cleric calls Pope ‘immoral’ for Armenia comments –

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s top cleric on Monday described comments by Pope Francis that the 1915 mass killing of Armenians was genocide as immoral and said the Vatican should look to its own history before leveling accusations of casting stones.

Francis this month became the first head of the Roman Catholic church to publicly call the killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians “genocide”, prompting a row with Turkey, which summoned the Vatican’s envoy and recalled its own.

“The Vatican will come out as the biggest loser if we are all giving account for past sufferings and pain caused,” Mehmet Gormez, head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, the highest religious authority in largely Muslim Turkey, told Reuters in an interview.

“Is the current situation of millions of Syrian refugees much less cause for concern to the Vatican than what happened during the Armenian deportation?” he said, referring to refugees from Syria’s civil war being sheltered in Turkey.

“I find the Pope’s statement immoral, and can’t reconcile it with basic Christian values.”