The Armenian church prepared today to canonise up to 1.5 million Armenians massacred by Ottoman forces as tensions over Turkey's refusal to recognise the killings as genocide reached boiling point. The ceremony, which is believed to become the biggest canonisation service in history, comes ahead of commemorations expected to see millions of people including heads of state tomorrow mark 100 years since the start of the killings.
The Armenian Apostolic Church announced the canonisation service for the "martyrs of the Armenian Genocide", calling for a "prayerful participation in this historic event". The service will be held in Armenia's main church, Echmiadzin, an austere fourth-century edifice believed to be the Christian world's oldest cathedral. The ceremony will run from 1830 IST and end at 2045 IST to symbolise the year when the massacres started during World War I.
"Thursday's canonisation unites all Armenians living around the globe," Huri Avetikian, an ethnic Armenian librarian from lebanon who arrived in her ancestral homeland to attend the service, told AFP. "Souls of the victims of the genocide will finally find eternal repose today," said 68-years-old social worker Varduhi Shanakian. "Supreme justice will triumph."