(Vatican Radio) Armenia backed separatists have condemned joined military exercises by Turkey and Azerbaijan. The drills, which last until Friday, come amid tensions between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Listen to the report by Stefan Bos: Defense officials confirmed that at at least 1,000 Azerbaijani and Turkish troops began the drills in Azerbaijan on Monday, which will last last to Friday May 5, despite criticism. They are said to also include armored vehicles, artillery batteries, airplanes and helicopters as well as air defense systems. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said the exercise is part of a broader military agreement between Turkey and Azerbaijan to improve coordination between the armed forces of both countries. Yet Azerbaijan's breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has a majority Armenian population, has condemned the military activities. The spokesman for the region's p...
(Vatican Radio) Armenia backed separatists have condemned joined military exercises by Turkey and Azerbaijan. The drills, which last until Friday, come amid tensions between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:
Defense officials confirmed that at at least 1,000 Azerbaijani and Turkish troops began the drills in Azerbaijan on Monday, which will last last to Friday May 5, despite criticism.
They are said to also include armored vehicles, artillery batteries, airplanes and helicopters as well as air defense systems.
Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said the exercise is part of a broader military agreement between Turkey and Azerbaijan to improve coordination between the armed forces of both countries.
Yet Azerbaijan's breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has a majority Armenian population, has condemned the military activities. The spokesman for the region's pro-Armenian leadership, David Babajan, warned in a statement: "If there are provocations, we will react."
DECLARING INDEPENDENCE
Armenian separatists declared their independence from Azerbaijan in the 1990s. They formed the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which includes some of Azerbaijan's seized borderlands.
Despite a cease-fire dating from 1994, there are regularly clashes on the heavily fortified frontier, with some 120 people dying in fighting a year ago.
The latest drills also come while relations between Turkey and Armenia have been strained for decades over the mass killing and deportation of some 1.5 million mainly Christian Armenians during World War I by the Ottoman Empire.
Those atrocities suffered by Armenians have been described as genocide by more than a dozen states and leaders, including Pope Francis.
But Turkey denies that the mass killings amounted to genocide.
President Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jesuit Father Greg Boyle on May 3, 2024. / Screenshot/public domainCNA Staff, May 3, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).The White House on Friday announced that Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, the founder of a prominent ministry dedicated to rehabilitating gang-affiliated youth, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom alongside 18 other recipients this afternoon. Boyle, ordained a priest in 1984, founded Homeboy Industries in 1992 while pastor of Dolores Mission, a Catholic church and school in an area that at one time had one of the highest concentrations of gang activity in Los Angeles. Today, Homeboy Industries claims to be the largest gang-intervention program in the United States.The successful ministry, which now operates nationwide, offers training and job skills to those formerly involved in gangs or in jail, as well as case management, tattoo removal, mental health and legal services, and GED completion.Wh...
Father Roger Landry, Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, discusses the protests at Columbia University in New York City on EWTN's "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo" on May 2, 2024. / Credit: EWTN News The World Over / ScreenshotWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 3, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).Father Roger Landry, a Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, said on Thursday that the protests making national headlines at the New York City school are being organized in part by "explicitly communist" outside forces. "There is an instrumentalization of what's going on in Gaza to advance an agenda," he said. "And that is to deconstruct our present world order at which the United States is considered the top of that order."Speaking on EWTN's "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo," Landry said that he had been walking through the encampment nearly daily, conversing with student protesters and other "outside agitators." While he said he believes that many of the protesters we...
Father Greg Boyle gives an address at "We ? LA: An Urban Retreat for LA's Passionate Leaders" in 2010. / Credit: durfeefoundation, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsCNA Staff, May 3, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).The White House on Friday announced that Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, the founder of a prominent ministry dedicated to rehabilitating gang-affiliated youth, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom alongside 18 other recipients this afternoon. Boyle, ordained a priest in 1984, founded Homeboy Industries in 1992 while pastor of Dolores Mission, a Catholic church and school in an area that at one time had one of the highest concentrations of gang activity in Los Angeles. Today, Homeboy Industries claims to be the largest gang-intervention program in the United States.The successful ministry, which now operates nationwide, offers training and job skills to those formerly involved in gangs or in jail, as well as case management, tattoo removal, mental health and le...