Pope Francis: the Church must be brave and speak boldly

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Church must be brave and speak boldly, Pope Francis said Monday, April 13 morning in his homily at Holy Mass in the Vatican's Chapel of Santa Marta, Aleteia reports.

“We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard”, Pope Francis said, quoting First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles (4:20), where Peter and John ask the Lord to enable them to speak freely and boldly.

The Pontiff recalled that Peter and John, having performed a miracle, were jailed and threatened by the priests not to speak in the name of Jesus. But the two go ahead and when they return to the brethren they encourage them to proclaim the Word of God “with boldness”. And they asked the Lord “to look upon their [enemies’] threats” and grant “to grant to his servants to speak his word with all boldness” and not to run away.

“Even today the Church’s message is a message of the path of boldness, of Christian courage. These two men, as the Bible tells us, who without instruction, had courage. It is a word that may be translated as ‘courage’, ‘boldness’, ‘freedom to speak’, ‘not being afraid to say things’ … It is a word that has many meanings, in the original language. Parresìa, boldness … and from fear they passed to boldness, to saying things with freedom,” Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis has described the mass killing of Armenians 100 years ago as genocide.

During a special mass to mark the centenary of the mass killing, the pontiff referred to “three massive and unprecedented tragedies” of the past century.

Turkey accused the Vatican of “using history for political aims: by singling out Armenians and not mentioning all lost lives in Anatolia during World War I.” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the comments were “not fitting of the Pope.”