In September 1922, as Smyrna burned, the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Chrysostomos Kalafatis was handed over to a mob by ...

In September 1922, as Smyrna burned, the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Chrysostomos Kalafatis was handed over to a mob by Turkish forces and killed in the street. He was 55 years old. He had refused to flee. Allied officers had urged him to escape. U.S. Consul George Horton personally visited him that evening and tried to smuggle him out on an American vessel. Chrysostomos refused. He had already written to a colleague: "Am I to abandon Smyrna and my Metropolis? Never." What followed was documented by multiple Western witnesses. The mob tore out his beard, stabbed him, gouged out his eyes, cut off his ears and tongue, and dragged his body through the streets to the Turkish quarter. Horton later wrote that Chrysostomos "died as a martyr" and that his only fault was being "a Greek of great patriotism and eloquence." French journalist René Puaux also documented what he saw firsthand. Chrysostomos was not the only clergyman killed that September. Metropolitan Ambrosios Pleiathidis of Moschonisia was cut to pieces on September 15 along with nine of his priests. Metropolitan Gregorios Orologas of Kydonies was buried alive on October 3, 1922, together with clergy and laypeople. Metropolitan Efthymios Agritelis died after 41 days of torture, thirst, and starvation in a prison cell, his death sentence issued from Ankara. The killing of Chrysostomos, by the accounts of those present, served as a signal for wider destruction across Smyrna. Massacres, burnings, and looting followed. The Greek population of Asia Minor, which had maintained its identity through five centuries of Ottoman rule, was being systematically eliminated. The Greek Orthodox Church later canonized Chrysostomos as a saint and ethno-hieromartyr. 104 years later, most of the Western world still does not know his name. #SmyrnaDisaster #AsiaMirrorCatastrophe #Chrysostomos1922