The Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide.
On 23 April 2015, the eve of the centenary, the church canonised the dead of 1915 in a single service at Etchmiadzin — a number usually given as 1.5 million, and deliberately not enumerated in the rite. Their feast is kept on the day before 24 April. It was the first canonisation the Armenian church had performed since the fourteenth century.
The canonisation was unusual in form: no individual dossiers, no named list, one collective declaration, and a rite the church had to reconstruct because it had not performed one since 1300. Bells rang in Armenian churches worldwide at the end, and the service closed at 19:15 to mark the year. The Republic of Turkey rejects the term genocide for the events of 1915-1923; more than thirty states and the majority of genocide scholars use it. For the Armenian church the canonisation settled the question in liturgical rather than diplomatic terms: the dead are on the calendar, which cannot be renegotiated.
The same ground, other faiths
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