Posted on 08/12/2015 4:49:28 AM PDT by marshmallow
Diyarbakir, Turkey, Aug 11, 2015 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- 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 the 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 as 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.
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