Vatican Releases Armenian Genocide Documents

Documents detailing the atrocities committed during the Armenian Genocide will shortly be released by the Vatican City, which did not disclose their existence until this year. More here.

Armenians in Georgia Call for Genocide Recognition

Representatives of southeastern Georgia's large Armenian minority have called on the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili to recognize the Armenian Genocide. More here.

Armenian Genocide Commemorated in Antelias

Thousands gathered in Antelias, Lebanon, on Pascha to celebrate the Lord's Resurrection and commemorate the one and a half million victims of the Armenian Genocide, of whom many of the members of the Armenian Diaspora in the Levant are descendants. The memorial service for the martyrs was served by Catholicos Aram I (Keshishian) of Cilicia. More here.

Iraqi Armenians Commemorate Genocide

Commemorations have been held by the Armenian Orthodox in northern Iraq to mark the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. More here.

Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide

This year Holy Pascha coincided with the feast day of the one and a half million martyrs of the Armenian Genocide. Consequently on Pascha Catholicos-Patriarch Karekin II (Nersessian) of Echmiadzin visited Yerevan's Genocide Memorial and celebrated a memorial for the Genocide's victims on the afternoon of Pascha. More on both the Paschal celebrations and the memorial can be found here and here.

Armenian Genocide to be Remembered in Turkey

Unofficial commemorations of the Armenian Genocide are being organized in five Turkish cities this year. More here.

MA Governor Named 2011 "Friend of the Armenians"

The Eastern American Diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church of Echmiadzin has announced that Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts will be honored at its upcoming diocesan assembly as 2011's "Friend of the Armenians." Governor Patrick is being honored for the warm relations he has maintained with the Armenian community in Massachusetts and for his advocacy of recognition of the Armenian Genocide. More here.

Turkish Writer Apologizes for Ottoman Turkish Genocides

A Turkish writer, Kemal Yalcin, has apologized to Armenians, Assyrians, and ethnic Syrians around the world for the Armenian Genocide and the Seyfo (the Assyrian/Syrian Genocide) undertaken by the Ottoman Turks and Kurds. Yalcin noted that had the Genocide not taken place Turkey today would have some 15 million additional Armenian, Assyrian, and Syrian residents (instead of a paltry 108,000). More here.

Swiss President Visits Echmiadzin

Yesterday Catholicos-Patriarch Karekin II (Nersessian) of Echmiadzin met with Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey at Holy Echmiadzin as part of the latter's visit to independent Armenia. During the course of the meeting Catholicos Karekin thanked Ms. Calmy-Rey for her efforts to improve relations between Armenia and Turkey as well as for Switzerland's recognition of the Armenian Genocide. More here.

Upcoming Armenian Genocide/Seyfo Commemoration in NYC

This coming 6 April the World War II-era Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides by the Ottoman Turks and Kurds will be commemorated in New York (not to mention worldwide). More here.

Assyrians and Armenians Protest Removal of Genocide Reference on Swedish Government Website

Assyrians and Armenians in Sweden are expressing their outrage over the removal from an official Swedish website of a reference in a recent speech of Minister for Integration Erik Ullenhag to the Seyfo, the Armenian and Assyrian Genocide by the Turks and Kurds that resulted in the death of 1.5 million Armenians, 750,000 Assyrians and Syrians, and 500,000 Greeks. The reference is said to have been removed due to pressure from the Turkish government. More here.

Catholicos Aram Meets with Artsakh PM, Serves Memorial for Sumgait Massacre Victims

As part of the visit of Prime Minister Ara Haroutiunian of Artsakh (formerly Nagorno-Karabakh) to the Armenian Orthodox Church of Cilicia, Catholicos Aram I (Keshishian) served a memorial for the victims of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and of the massacre at Sumgait in Azerbaijan in 1988. More here.

Armenian Orthodox Church in Diyarbakir to Reopen

A large church in upper Mesopotamia (modern day southeastern Turkey), St. Cyriacus' Church in Diyarbakir, is being renovated and will by reopened by the Armenian Orthodox Church of Constantinople later this year for use as a pilgrimage center as the city's once large Armenian community was completely wiped out by the area's Kurds and Turks during the Armenian Genocide. The church will quite possibly be the largest in use in the Middle East. More here and here.

Assyrian Genocide Memorial Planned for Yerevan

With the support of the government of Yerevan the Assyrian community in Armenia hopes to erect an Assyrian Genocide memorial in the city in the near future. The Armenian and Assyrian Genocides were undertaken by the Turks and Kurds simultaneously during World War I and devastated both nations, wiping them out in most of their historic homelands and scattered most of the survivors across the globe. More here.

Armenians Protest Turkish Premier's Visit to Lebanon

Armenians living in Lebanon protested the arrival today of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. Lebanon's 150,000 Armenians are primarily descended from the survivors of the Armenian Genocide in eastern Anatolia organizedin 1915  by the Turks and Kurds. Armenian politicians in Lebanon were cautious in their comments on the Turkish leader's visit, but the Armenian Orthodox Church of Cilicia spoke against it and the Turkish government's ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide. More here.

Iraqi Kurdistan Offers Christians in Central Iraq Assylum

President Barzani of Kurdistan, one of the federal regions in US-occupied Iraq, has invited the Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, and Assyrians suffering persecution in the rest of the country to relocate to Kurdistan. Northeastern Mesopotamia, modern day Iraqi Kurdistan and far southeastern Turkey, was previously the center of the region's Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian Christian, and Chaldean Catholic populations, with the patriarchs of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church living in the region until the early twentieth century when the Kurds, with Turkish support, undertook the Assyrian and Armenian Genocides and either massacred most of the area's Christians or drove them south into present day central Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

Baghdad has been the site of most of the recent anti-Christian violence, but Mosul, the main city in Iraqi Kurdistan, has been the site of several kidnappings and murders of Assyrians and Chaldean Catholics. The seriousness of the Kurdistani government's offer, how Iraq's Christians will respond, and whether the life of Kurdistan's existing Christian minorities will improve remains to be seen. CNN's story on President Barzani's offer can be found here.

Pictured is Dayro d'Mar Mattai, one of the oldest surviving monasteries in Mesopotamia near ancient Nineveh and modern-day Mosul, Iraq. For many centuries it was the seat of the Syriac Orthodox Church's Maphrians of the East, among them St. Gregory of Ebroyo, whose relics remain there to this day.