Churches in Armenia are this year marking the centenary of the 1915 Genocide, in which one and a half million Christian Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks. The head of the Armenian Apostolic church, Catholicos Garegin II, praised his country for "rising again from the ruins" after the massacres, during with Armenian churches and schools were also destroyed.
Patriarch Garegin II and Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, visited the memorial to victims of the genocide, the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan, in November to celebrate a requiem Mass.
The two also visited a temporary exhibition at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan about the history of the genocide.
Above: The Akdamar church, one of the most precious remnants of Armenian culture. It was inaugurated as the Church of Surp Khach, or Holy Cross, in AD 921 on Akdamar Island on Lake Van, Turkey. A Mass was finally celebrated there in 2010, the first time since the genocide. Image: PA
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