Summary
Pope Francis set off for a three-day visit to Armenia Friday, just over a year after he enraged Turkey by using the term genocide to describe the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.
Highlights of the papal trip will include a visit to Armenia's main memorial to the 1915-17 killings, a meeting with members of the country's small Roman Catholic community and the release of two doves in the direction of Mount Ararat from the Khor Virap sanctuary near the border with Turkey.
Francis is the second pope to visit Armenia since it re-emerged as an independent state from the ashes of the Soviet Union.
Over 13,000 people have booked tickets to attend the mass the pope will preside over in Gyumri with pilgrims from Lebanon and Georgia's Armenian-populated Javakheti region expected to be among them.
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