Translated from Italian by Vartan Matiossian
The Armenian word "Medz Yeghern" is even "stronger" than the term genocide. This is what answers Father Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Vatican, to the question about why there is still a certain shyness in the Vatican about using the term genocide to indicate the persecution and elimination that the Armenian people suffered in 1915. "Why -- Lombardi asked -- all this obsession to ask about this?" He added: "We know what happened. Nobody rejects that these were horrible massacres and we recognize that. But we do not want to make a trap of political debates because we go to the substance. It is an enormous tragedy."
