Pope Set to Visit Armenia

Pope Francis will probably visit Armenia in June, his spokesman said Friday.

"It is under examination, probably for the second half of June," spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters, while stressing that dates and a detailed itinerary are yet to be finalized.

Armenia is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world and Francis has backed the country's efforts to have the mass killings suffered by ethnic Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I recognized internationally as a genocide.

This has caused a chill in Vatican relations with Turkey, which Francis visited in November 2014.

Francis would be the second pope to visit Armenia since it became an independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Pope John Paul II went there in 2001.

The trip will be the latest in a series of visits Francis has made to countries on the periphery of Europe where Catholics form a small minority of the population, following earlier visits to Albania and Bosnia.

Armenia's Christians are mostly Orthodox and make up the majority of the population in a country which was the first to adopt Christianity as a state religion in 301.