The Holy See will not be represented at the commemoration ceremonies for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 24, officials from the Vatican Embassy in Ankara told daily Hürriyet on April 21, the news website reported.

Vatican Embassy officials cited “the cardinal’s unwellness” as the reason the Vatican would be absent.

Bilateral relations between Turkey and the Vatican were strained when Pope Francis defined the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey as genocide during a Sunday mass earlier this month. He prompted a row with Turkey, which summoned the Vatican’s envoy and recalled its own.

An April 15 European Parliament motion calling the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 a genocide followed the pope’s statement.