The Coincidence Of The Year

Armenia's top religious leader delivered the morning prayer Wednesday on the same day a House committee approved a highly controversial measure acknowledging the genocide of ethnic Armenians almost a century ago.

The Supreme Patriarch of all Armenians Catholicos Karekin II invoked that genocide during his prayer, saying, "With the solemn burden of history, we remember the victims of the genocide of the Armenians."

Later that day, the Foreign Affairs Committee approved a measure, 27-21, to acknowledge the killing of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks amounted to a "genocide" despite heated complaints from the Turkish government and years of hand-wringing by lawmakers and diplomats in Washington.

But aides on both sides of the aisle suggested afterward that the Supreme Patriarch's appearance was something of a coincidence - believe it or not.