Pope Francis Replays Pope Benedict XV’s Silence on Armenian Genocide

When the chips are down, the popes are no friends of the persecuted Church

“Obama’s foreign policy has three parts: Abandon our allies, appease our enemies, and apologize for America,” US Congresswoman Liz Cheney famously said. To be “deep in history” is to recognize that popes down the ages have adopted the policy of feeding the crocodile in the hope it will eat you last.

Pope Francis, the latest in a long line of appeaser popes, is tight-lipped as one of the world’s most oppressive Islamic-led regimes ethnically cleanses one of the world’s oldest Christian communities.

Worse still, Francis has legitimized the oligarchy of Azerbaijan in exchange for its undisclosed financial support of the Vatican.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan carried out a lightning offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the Republic of Artsakh, forcing virtually the entire population of over 120,000 indigenous Christians to flee to neighboring Armenia.

In his Sunday Angelus address on Oct. 1, the pontiff euphemistically labelled the mass persecution a “humanitarian crisis” and timidly called for “dialogue between Azerbaijan and Armenia.”

Olympic ban?

As the Vatican issued yet another pious platitude for the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics to serve as “strategies for peace and antidotes to war games,” Christian Solidarity International (CSI) has called for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to exclude Azerbaijan from the Olympics.

“There is no place for genocide at the Olympics!” a strongly-worded appeal from CSI declared. “After Russia invaded Ukraine, the IOC barred Russia and Belarus from sending national teams to the 2024 Olympics. The IOC should apply the same standard to Azerbaijan.”

Last week, Christians under the banner “Disciples of Christ” protested outside Azerbaijan’s embassy in London, demanding justice for the persecuted Armenian Christians and calling for an end to the “global genocide of Christians.”

William Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, tweeted his support for the persecuted Armenians on July 25 after meeting Asatur Nahapetyan, the head of the Armenian Baptist Union, asking Southern Baptists to support the Armenian Baptists “during these tenuous times in their country as they live under the threat of continued aggression and persecution from the Azeri Muslims.”

International condemnation

In January 2024, the US included Azerbaijan on the Special Watch List “for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom.” In the same month, the Parliament Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) expelled Azerbaijan’s parliamentary delegation, citing human rights violations.

PACE also cited the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, recalling its condemnation of the military operation “which led to the flight of the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and to allegations of ‘ethnic cleansing’.”

The condemnation of the international community is in stark contrast to the Vatican’s endorsement of the predominantly Shiite Muslim regime, which has a history of persecuting its religious and ethnic minorities.

The Armenian Apostolic Church is the largest denomination in Azerbaijan, with 110 churches, followed by the Armenian Baptists. The Catholic Church has the smallest number of adherents in the country, with fewer than 700 members, who are mostly the descendants of immigrants.

Papal condemnation

When Pope Francis visited oil-rich Azerbaijan in October 2016, he praised the country as a place of religious tolerance. “You are sending a clear message to the world here from Baku that multiculturalism, interfaith dialogue and goodwill has to prevail,” he told Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev.

Even the New York Times couldn’t help remarking how “Francis was silent about the Azerbaijan government’s much-criticized record on civil liberties, human rights and fair elections.” The pro-Francis newspaper noted that the pope’s “silence” was “noticeable, if perhaps not surprising.”

But Francis endorsed the oligarchy even further when the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin conferred the highest order of papal knighthood — the Order of Pope Pius IX (Dama di Gran Croce dell’ordine Piano) — on Azerbaijan’s vice-president Mehriban Aliyeva in the Vatican in February 2020.

It seemed like Francis had rewarded nepotism: Vice President Aliyeva is the wife of President Aliyev. The order has always been restricted exclusively to lay Catholics — usually emperors, presidents, or the nobility. It was also conferred on Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano.

Persecutor knighted

The Vatican media did not report the award, in its English or Italian news service, but the Azerbaijan president’s office bragged about it and posted photographs of Aliyeva being knighted by Parolin.

Pope Francis gave the president’s family a red carpet welcome at the Apostolic Palace — in this case the Vatican released pictures of Aliyev, Aliyeva and their daughter, Leyla, with the pontiff.

In October 2023, the Vatican conferred the same award on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinya, but there was no backslapping with Pope Francis. Instead, the award was presented to him by the papal nuncio, Abp. José Avelino Bettencourt, in his office.

One explanation for Francis’ silence is the funding the Holy See has been receiving since 2009 from the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, which is headed by Mehriban Aliyeva. It has funded various activities in the Vatican: restoration projects, exhibitions and concerts.

Follow the money

In 2020, Emin Rustamov, then-president of the Azerbaijan Italian Youth Association in Rome, tweeted that “Azerbaijan has donated more than 1 million euros for the restoration of several historical monuments and churches in the Vatican,” according to a report published in IRPI Media.

In 2009 the foundation contributed an undisclosed sum to the reconstruction of the pro-cathedral Church of the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception in the capital city of Baku. The land on which the church is built was gifted by former President Heydar Aliyev, the father of President Ilham Aliyev.

“The Heydar Aliyev Foundation has implemented a number of projects in the Vatican, starting with the repair of catacombs in St. Peter’s Basilica and, in particular, the bas-relief depicting the encounter between Pope Leo I and Attila King of the Huns. A new agreement on cooperation was signed on restoration of Saint Commodilla catacombs (Rome),” the charity announced in 2021.

“For over ten years, religious monuments of significant historical importance in Vatican have been restored with the support of the Foundation,” the Heydar Aliyev website boasted, noting that Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president emeritus of the Pontifical Council of the Holy See for Culture and of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, had signed an agreement with Azerbaijan.

Funding cathedrals and catacombs

“The Heydar Aliyev Foundation has participated in the restoration of over ten churches in various regions of France, including the Strasbourg Cathedral,” it announced in 2022.

Earlier in 2016, Mehriban Aliyeva attended the inauguration of the Saints Marcellinus and Peter catacombs at a Vatican ceremony. During the event, Ravasi confirmed that the foundation had provided the much-needed funding for the restoration work carried out on the catacombs.

The foundation also funded the restoration of artworks (including a statue of Zeus) in the Pio Clementino Museum, which is part of the complex of the Vatican Museums, and paid for the restoration of cabinets in the Sistine Hall, as well as over 3,000 books in the Apostolic Library.

Ravasi has signed an agreement with the foundation for the restoration of the four-tiered Saint Sebastian tombs. The funding for all the above projects would amount to tens of millions of euros, a friend of mine, who is an expert in art restoration and is connected to the Vatican Museums, informed me.

History lessons

In failing to condemn Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of the Armenians, Francis is failing to learn the lessons from Pope Benedict XV, who kept mum when the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey) launched its genocide of the Armenians in 1915, massacring between 800,000 and 1 million Armenians, out of a population of 1.8 million.

“Around 140,000 Armenians were Catholics; of that number around 100,000 perished in the genocide. Armenian church property was confiscated, and churches were turned into mosques, so that the genocide virtually destroyed the Armenian Catholic Church,” writes historian Jacques Kornberg in The Pope’s Dilemma: Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War.

Seven bishops, 130 priests and 47 nuns were among those slaughtered; and many Christians were forced to convert to Islam. Benedict XV refrained from any public condemnation of the genocide.

Instead, he wrote a hand-wringing letter to Sultan Mohammed Reshad V, the Ottomans’ titular monarch. The Vatican did not release the text of the letter. The papal mouthpiece L’Osservatore Romano assured its readers that “there is every hope of a favorable result.”

Diplomats and appeasers

In all likelihood, the Sultan never received the letter. When the pope’s envoy, Abp. Angelo Marie Dolci, handed it to the director-general of the palace, he was rebuffed and told that the letter reflected Western prejudice against Islam.

“Benedict’s letter did nothing more than put the Roman Catholic Church on record as rhetorically opposing mass killing,” laments Kornberg. Just like Pius XII, Benedict XV would follow “a policy of political neutrality” and withhold “condemnation of those committing wartime atrocities.”

To be “deep in history” is to learn that when the chips are down, the popes are no friends of the persecuted Church. Christians suffering in Communist China, Hindu India and Islamic Nigeria (among other Islamic countries) are learning this under Francis.

With notable exceptions, popes confronted with persecuted Christians have been diplomats, appeasers, or coin collectors who love the feel of 30 pieces of silver.

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral. This article has been cross-posted from Souls and Liberty with his permission.