Chrysostomos of Smyrna

Saint Chrysostomos the New-Hieromartyr of Smyrna
Photograph of St. Chrysostomos of Smyrna.
Born	1867 Triglia, Ottoman Empire
Died	9 September 1922 Smyrna, Ottoman Empire
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church
Canonized	4 November 1992 by Church of Greece
Feast	Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (7-13 September)
Attributes	Episcopal vestments, usually holding a staff or a Gospel.

Chrysostomos Kalafatis (1867–1922) (Greek: Χρυσόστομος Καλαφάτης), known as Saint Chrysostomos of Smyrna, Chrysostomos of Smyrna and Metropolitan Chrysostom, was the Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Smyrna (Izmir) between 1910 and 1914, and again from 1919 to his death in 1922. He was born in Triglia (today Zeytinbağı), Turkey in 1867, and was killed by a lynch mob during the sacking of Smyrna by Turkish troops at the end of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922. He was declared a martyr and a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Church by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece on 4 November 1992.

Early life

Kalafatis studied at the historical Theological School of Halki from the age of 17. He became the Metropolitan of Drama in 1902 and the Metropolitan of Smyrna in 1910.

Return to Smyrna

He had not been in good terms with the Ottoman/Turkish authorities and he was displaced. When the Greek army occupied Smyrna in 1919, at the beginning of the Greco-Turkish war, Kalafatis was reinstated to his office as bishop.

Lynching

On 9 September (Julian style – 27 August) 1922, soon after the Turkish army had moved into Smyrna, a Turkish officer and two soldiers took Chrysostomos from the office of the cathedral and delivered him to the Turkish commander-in-chief, Nureddin Pasha. The general decided to hand him over to a Turkish mob who murdered him.

According to French soldiers who witnessed the lynching but were under strict orders from their commanding officer not to intervene:

"The mob took possession of Metropolitan Chrysostom and carried him away... a little further on, in front of an Italian hairdresser named Ismail ... they stopped and the Metropolitan was slipped into a white hairdresser's overall. They began to beat him with their fists and sticks and to spit on his face. They riddled him with stabs. They tore his beard off, they gouged his eyes out, they cut off his nose and ears."

Bishop Chrysostomos was then dragged (according to some sources, he was dragged around the city by a car or truck) into a backstreet of the Iki Cheshmeli district where he died soon after.

Family Survivors

Metropolitan Chrysostomos was survived by his nephews, among whom was Yannis Elefteriades, who witnessed the arrest and execution of his uncle, having found shelter by his side after the killing of his parents. He escaped as a refugee to Lebanon, where today his grandson Michel Elefteriades is a well-known Greek-Lebanese artist and producer.

See also

• Relief Committee for Greeks of Asia Minor
• Halki seminary

References

• Akcam, Taner, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. Metropolitan Books. (2006)

External links

• Chrysostomos (Kalafatis) of Smyrna, at Orthodox Wiki.
• The lost descendants of Hellenism: The Antiochian Greeks, at E-Epanastasi.