Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been urged to follow the lead of the Pope in ­recognising the Ottoman Turks’  slaughter of up to 1.5 million ­Armenians  in 1915 as the first genocide of the 20th century, Armenian Weekly reports referring to The Australian.

As NEWS.am reports, Armenian National Committee of Australia executive director Vache Kahramanian praised the Pope. “It’s a very welcome development that the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics has used his divine liturgy to put on record the historical reality and importance of never forgetting such abhorrent crimes,” he said.

He hoped the Pope’s message would put international pressure on Turkey to recognise the “crime of genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire … We are also hoping it will awaken Tony ­Abbott’s conscience and he’ll act in the footsteps of the pontiff, being a devout Catholic, in recognising the genocide and rejecting Turkey’s ongoing gag on the international community,” he said.