Metropolitan Hilarion: Concealing the tragic events of history will not lead to reconciliation or peace

"Better late than never," said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, on “The Church and the World program”, while commenting on the fact that the United States of America has officially recognized the massacres of ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire over a century ago as genocide.

As the archpastor noted, "historical realities of this kind, no matter how sad they are, must be recognized, and things must be called by their proper names."

“I do not think that now in Turkey anyone will suffer from the fact that the obvious fact of the tragedy that took place in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, when more than a million Armenians became victims of the genocide in the Ottoman Empire, will be recognized at the international level. Just like the Asia Minor catastrophe that occurred after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when several hundred thousand representatives of the Greek diaspora were forced to move from Turkey to Greece - all these events are sad and tragic.” said the DECR chairman.

He pointed out that there are similar tragic events in Russian history, stressing: “Сoncealment of such events or belittling their significance and scale will not lead to either reconciliation or harmony in society. On the contrary, I am deeply convinced that historical realities should be called by their proper names. Even a hundred years later, but it is necessary to assess those actions so that they would never be repeated in the future. "

DECR Communication service

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Metropolitan Hilarion: Concealing the tragic events of history will not lead to reconciliation or peace

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons