Rome, Italy, Apr 12, 2015 / 08:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis today referred to the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 as a “genocide,” prompting the Turkish government to summon the Vatican’s ambassador for questioning.

“In the past century our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies. The first, which is widely considered ‘the first genocide of the twentieth century,’ struck your own Armenian people, the first Christian nation,” the Pope said April 12.