The Armenian Genocide is a stain in the history of the whole of humanity, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri from the Vatican has said, Catholic News Agency reports.

The fact of the Armenian Genocide "forces us to confront both the great evils committed in human history and the small evils we commit in our personal lives," the cardinal said.

Also known by the Armenian term Medz Yeghern, the Genocide is a “stain in the history of the whole of humanity, not only of those who were the negative protagonists of those days or of those who have remained silent for indifference or complicity,” Sandri added.

Sandri, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Oriental Churches, spoke in a homily during a Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Catholic Church in Rome on April 24.

The Divine Liturgy, said at the Pontifical Armenian College, marked the 106th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide in 1915, when over the span of eight years, the Ottoman Empire targeted the mostly Christian Armenian minority for mass displacement, family separation, death marches, mass shootings, starvation, and other abuses. 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the Genocide.