What Pope Francis Said in His June 24 Speech

1) The "powerful images" of Yeghishe Charents

It gives me great joy to be here, to set foot on the soil of this beloved land of Armenia, to visit a people of ancient and rich traditions, a people that has given courageous testimony to its faith and suffered greatly, yet has shown itself capable of constantly being reborn.

“Our turquoise sky, our clear waters, the flood of light, the summer sun and the proud winter borealis… our age-old stones … our ancient etched books which have become a prayer” (ELISE CIARENZ, Ode to Armenia). These are among the powerful images that one of your illustrious poets offers us to illustrate the rich history and natural beauty of Armenia. They sum up the rich legacy and the glorious yet dramatic experience of a people and their deep-seated love of their country.

The Self-Delusion of "Great Calamity": What "Medz Yeghern" Actually Means Today

Vartan Matiossian

Towards the metropolis of the Medz Yeghern 
(Avetis Aharonian, 1918)¹

In our previous article, we established that “Medz Yeghern” literally meant “Great Crime” for the survivors of the genocide. It becomes clear that the phrase cannot be arbitrarily translated to a completely different semantic field like “calamity,” even if the meaning of the word had fundamentally changed later at some point in the past hundred years. Here, we will see that, 1) It is not only the survivors who understood yeghern as “crime,” contemporary Eastern Armenian writers who were not victims of the genocide also understood it that way; 2) the following generations also understood it as “crime” until this day.