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Bishop murdered for refusing to convert to Islam to be beatified

Aug 14, 2015 12:49 pm By Robert Spencer

Flavien-Michel MalkéNowadays Bishop Flavien-Michel Malké’s feckless successors among the U.S. Catholic bishops bow and scrape before the children and heirs of those who killed him, silencing those who speak out about the Muslim persecution of Christians and consigning today’s new martyrs to their fate, sacrificing them on the altar of their fruitless, delusional and self-defeating quest for “dialogue” with Muslims. How many Christians has that “dialogue” prevented from being persecuted or martyred? Why, absolutely none, of course. But the comfortable suburban Church continues on its comfortable suburban way, secure in its illusions and delusions. One day, however, the truth it has so assiduously endeavored to ignore, deny and suppress will dawn upon it with undeniable and terrifying reality, and maybe some of those bishops will realize how ill they served their people by enforcing and reinforcing their ignorance and complacency.

“Syriac Bishop Will Be Beatified on the 100th Anniversary of His Martyrdom (832),” National Catholic Register, August 11, 2015:

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — On Saturday, Pope Francis approved a decree recognizing the martyrdom of Flavien-Michel Malké, a Syriac Catholic bishop who was killed in 1915, amid the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against its Christian minorities.

The decision was made during an Aug. 8 meeting between Pope Francis and Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Bishop Malké will be beatified Aug. 29, the 100th anniversary of his martyrdom, during a liturgy celebrated by Ignatius Youssef III Younan, the Syriac patriarch of Antioch, at the convent of Our Lady of Deliverance in Lebanon. It is expected that thousands of Syrians and Iraqis displaced by the Islamic State will attend the beatification.

“In these painful times experienced by Christians, especially the Syriac communities in Iraq and Syria, the news of the beatification of one of their martyrs, will surely bring encouragement and consolation to face today’s trials of appalling dimension,” read an Aug. 9 statement of the Syriac Patriarchate of Antioch.

“Blessed Martyr Michael, intercede for us, and protect especially the Christians in the Orient and all the world in these hard and painful days.”

Malké was born in 1858 in the village of Kalaat Mara, a village of the Ottoman Empire in what is now Turkey, to a Syriac Orthodox family. He joined a monastery of that Church and was ordained a deacon, but then converted to the Syriac Catholic Church. (Both the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholics use the West-Syrian rite.)

After his conversion, he was ordained a priest in Aleppo in 1883. He was a member of the Fraternity of St. Ephrem and served parishes in southeastern Turkey, near his home.

Ottoman persecution of Christians began in earnest with the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1897. Malké’s church and home were sacked and burned in 1895, and many of his parishioners were murdered, including his mother. In total, the massacres killed between 80,000 and 300,000 Christians.

He was selected to become a bishop in the 1890s, serving as a chorbishop and helping in the rebuilding of Christian villages. In 1913, he was consecrated bishop and appointed head of the Syriac Diocese of Gazireh (modern-day Cizre, 150 miles southeast of Diyarbakir).

A second round of persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire began in April 1915. Known as the Armenian Genocide, it targeted the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christian minorities in the empire. The Assyrian genocide (the portion of the mass killings directed against Syriac and Chaldean Christians) is also known as the Seyfo Massacre, from the Syriac word for sword.

Some 1.5 million Christians were killed, and millions more were displaced during the genocide.

During the summer when the genocide broke out, Bishop Malké was in the Idil district, near Gazireh. In June 1915, hearing the Ottoman forces were preparing to massacre Gazireh’s people, he returned.

According to the Syriac Patriarchate, when his friends and acquaintances urged him to withdraw from Gazireh to a safer location, he replied, “Even my blood I will shed for my sheep.”

Together with four of his priests and the Chaldean bishop of Gazireh, Philippe-Jacques Abraham, he was arrested and imprisoned for two months.

Bishop Malké refused to convert to Islam, and on Aug. 29, 1915, he was martyred.

He was the last Syriac bishop of Gazireh; after his death, the diocese was suppressed, and, today, the Syriac Catholic Church has no presence in Turkey.

In an Aug. 8 interview with Vatican Radio, the postulator of Bishop Malké’s cause, Father Rami Al Kabalan, spoke of the bishop’s deep spiritual life as well as the relevance his martyrdom has today.

The bishop, he said, “played a fundamental role in encouraging people to defend their faith in the difficulties of the time, during the persecutions of the Ottoman Empire.”

Bishop Malké lived a life of poverty, even selling his liturgical vestments in order to assist the poor and help fight poverty, Father Al Kabalan said.

In addition to his closeness with the poor, the priest said that Bishop Malké was extremely zealous in his apostolate and visited all of the parishes within his diocese.

One of the bishop’s most striking phrases, his postulator said, comes from when he was pressured to renounce the faith and to convert to Islam. Rather than giving in, the bishop replied, “I will defend my faith to the blood.”…

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Filed Under: Catholic Church, Featured, Muslim persecution of Christians Tagged With: Flavien-Michel Malké


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Comments

  1. Westman says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 1:18 pm

    Flavien-Michel Malké was beheaded by men who misunderstood Islamic scriptures about smiting the vanquished on their necks. It had nothing to do with Islam as democratic administrators can attest. Perhaps he was cheering for the wrong soccer team.

  2. Linde Barrera says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 1:47 pm

    To Robert Spencer- Thank you for this inspiring article about Bishop Melke. It is always humbling to read about people who give their lives to Christ, willingly and with joy. Bishop Melke and other martyrs had no weapons to defend themselves against their own government, and other governments wouldn’t help them either. May he and all the martyrs for Christ be enjoying Jesus’ company in Heaven.

    • EYESOPEN says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 9:47 pm

      Amen. Excellent post! My thanks also to Robert for this information about Bishop Melke. This I have not heard until now.

  3. Don Foss says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 2:12 pm

    Excellent, yet how many millions of infidels and apostates have been murdered over the last 1400 years for their refusal to follow a barbaric and brutal “prophet” and a false god?

    • boakai ngombu says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 9:48 am

      considering the many infidels and apostates ,who have been murdered and martyred, just how impotent is the Allah god of islam (unknowable; the best of all deceivers) and weak is Muhammad (lately contrived; full of lusts) to erase and subjugate those not bound by SHARIA (enslavement tool)?

  4. Carlos Danger says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 2:52 pm

    It is not in my nature to die like a sheep. May the souls of this man and his flock, killed for their Christian faith, find rest, but I’d prefer to go out surrounded by the corpses of those who offer me and mine harm.

    • Don says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 12:46 pm

      Well said, and my death at the hands of Islamic doctrine would have the same, and may yet being as how I have to travel and do work in that part of the world from time to time.

    • EYESOPEN says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 9:54 pm

      Personally, I agree with you Carlos. It is not in my nature to be slaughtered like an animal without taking with me as many of the enemy as I can. This, however, was a man of God. It is possible that he hoped to influence perhaps just one to come to Christ by his bravery. Unfortunately, muzlims don’t see true martyrdom as bravery; they mistake it for weakness.

  5. Tiredofstupid says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 3:11 pm

    Hope they have great security–very inviting target for a truck bomb among the gathered infidels.

  6. Angemon says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 3:26 pm

    One of the bishop’s most striking phrases, his postulator said, comes from when he was pressured to renounce the faith and to convert to Islam. Rather than giving in, the bishop replied, “I will defend my faith to the blood.”

    If only today’s Christian leaders had 1/10th of his courage…

  7. Fr. Basil says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    Holy new Hieromartyr Flavien-Michel , pray for us.

    • Cecilia Ellis says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 12:03 am

      Amen!

  8. ploome says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    Is this what the church is doing for the Christian populations still under threat in Iraq, Syria etc?

    Is this supposed to send a message?

    Die and after 100 yrs you too may be beatified?

    insane

    • Westman says

      Aug 14, 2015 at 5:38 pm

      Too true, ploome,

      Perhaps the message is the Church is now all beatitudes and no substance. Don’t rock the boat on the profitable enterprise(keep the Vatican Bank stuffed) and paint some martyr images on the ceiling.

    • Don says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 12:49 pm

      Attacking capitalism and climate change. That´s safe enough, aint it?

  9. ploome says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 3:43 pm

    All Christians here, should go back to their church this Sunday, and plan a demonstration after service

    ACROSS THE COUNTRY

    so that something will be done to save them

    and STOP more muslim immigrants to the USA

  10. mortimer says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 9:17 pm

    Syriac Christians refer to Turkey’s genocide of their people as Saifo (the Sword) as Jews refer to the ‘Holocaust’ or ‘Shoah’.

    750,000 Syriac Christians were murdered between 1915 and 1924.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 19, 2015 at 2:41 am

      What is today called the Armenian Genocide–actually, a Jihad against Armenian, Syrian, Greek, Assyrian, and Levantine Christians, as well as Jews–basically, *all* non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire–murdered well over a million and a half people in waves between the 1890s and 1922.

  11. P.McCoy says

    Aug 15, 2015 at 12:56 am

    My question is why such a man apostasized from the Eastern Orthodox faith in order to become a Uniate? I admire those Orthodox Christians like Serbs who refused both the turban or the Catholic mitre.

    • St. Michael Defend Us says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 11:17 am

      You are convinced that the mitre of the Syriac Orthodox is superior to the mitre of the Syriac Catholic. Are you Orthodox?
      As an outsider to both, I do not perceive a substantial difference between them. What is your explanation of the difference?

      • P.McCoy says

        Aug 16, 2015 at 1:16 am

        The filioque is one area; but not to get too off topic I would suggest reading about the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church’s history from an Orthodox perspective.

        But many here will say that it matters little that Moslems are killing Christians regardless of the Great Schism.

        Nevertheless, the past where France aided the Ottoman Empire or that In the 20th century never helped Orthodox Christians against.Moslem.brutality would matter to some.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 19, 2015 at 2:47 am

      P.McCoy wrote:

      My question is why such a man apostasized from the Eastern Orthodox faith in order to become a Uniate?
      ………………………..

      *Really*? *That’s* your only question?

      More:

      But many here will say that it matters little that Moslems are killing Christians regardless of the Great Schism.
      ………………………..

      Well, duh. Ravening Mohammedans didn’t care whether this good man was Catholic, or Greek Orthodox, or Assyrian Christian,or Russian Orthodox, or any other kind of Christian.

      And it is just the same today. Pious Muslims consider them all “filthy Infidels”, and fair game for murder.

      • P.McCoy says

        Aug 19, 2015 at 3:47 am

        Of course, apostasy is Serious business. It was so easy for him to turn “Latin” maybe he should have turned “Turk” as well!

        I prefer those Orthodox who like St.Basil of Ostrog avoided Latin.treachery and Moslem brutality!

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