104 years ago this October, Metropolitan Gregorios of Kydonies was tortured and killed by Kemalist forces in Ayvalik, on...

104 years ago this October, Metropolitan Gregorios of Kydonies was tortured and killed by Kemalist forces in Ayvalik, one of the final acts of the Asia Minor Catastrophe that erased centuries of Greek life from the Anatolian coast. Born Anastasios Antoniadis in Magnesia, Asia Minor in 1864, Gregorios studied at the Halki Theological School and spent decades defending Greek communities across Macedonia and the Aegean. He was among the first Orthodox preachers to deliver sermons in the everyday spoken Greek language, reaching ordinary people rather than just the educated class. The Turkish government considered him such a threat that it pressured Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III to exile him from Macedonia and reassign him to the newly created metropolitanate of Kydonies in 1908. When Greek forces withdrew from Kydonies in the summer of 1922, Gregorios urged local leaders to evacuate residents to Lesbos to escape the approaching Turkish irregulars. The warning went unheeded. On August 22, 1922, Kemalist irregulars massacred 4,000 Greeks near the town of Franeli on the Gulf of Adramyttion. Gregorios refused to leave. After learning that Metropolitan Ambrosios of Moschonisia and 6,000 of his flock had been slaughtered, Gregorios negotiated directly with Kemalist commanders to allow Greek ships from Mytilene, sailing under an American flag with American Red Cross guarantees, to evacuate 20,000 of the 35,000 Greeks still in the region. He stayed behind. On September 30, 1922, he was arrested and imprisoned. He was tortured in his cell and executed on October 3, 1922, alongside other priests and community leaders who had also been taken captive. The Orthodox Church commemorates his memory on the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, together with all clergy and laypeople killed during the Asia Minor Catastrophe. #AsiaMinorCatastrophe #GreekHistory #Martyrs