The Turkish government has summoned the Vatican envoy in Ankara after Pope Francis described the mass killings perpetrated by Ottomans against Armenians during World War One as a genocide.
At a mass conducted in the Armenian Catholic rite at Peter's Basilica, the pope said humanity had lived through "three massive and unprecedented tragedies" in the last century.
"The first, which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the 20th Century', struck your own Armenian people," he said.
Pope Francis also referred to the crimes "perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism" and said other genocides had followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia.
"Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it," the pope added.
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