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The blunt-speaking Pope on Sunday set off a diplomatic row by calling the slaughter of Armenians during World War I "the first genocide of the 20th century," Truth Revolt reports.

Politicians including George W. Bush and Barack Obama -- who during his 2008 campaign vowed to call the slaughter a genocide -- have refrained from using the word, fearing political fallout, the author notes. 

Pope Francis, however, had no such fears.

"In the past century, our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies," the Pope said at a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian massacres.

"The first, which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the twentieth century,' struck your own Armenian people," he said, referencing a 2001 declaration by Pope John Paul II and the head of the Armenian church.

The author says that the Pope made clear that world leaders who avoid the word are cowards.

"Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it," he said at the start of a Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite in St. Peter's Basilica honoring the centenary. He called on all heads of state to declare what happened to Armenians and to oppose such crimes "without ceding to ambiguity or compromise."