Saint Ignatius Maloyan

Ignatius Maloyan, ICPB (Armenian: Իգնատիոս Մալոյան, April 8, 1869 – June 11, 1915), born as Shukrallah Maloyan, was an Armenian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Mardin from 1911 to 1915. After repeatedly refusing conversion to Islam, he was tortured and murdered by the Ottoman Gendarmerie during the Armenian genocide, specifically in Diyarbekir Vilayet under Mehmed Reshid. Maloyan was beatified by Pope John Paul II as a martyr in 2001. In 2025, Pope Francis approved a plan for his canonization. He was canonized on October 19, 2025. Shoukrallah Maloyan was born in 1869 in an Armenian family. When he was fourteen years old, he was sent by his parish priest to the Armenian Catholic Cathedral at Bzoummar, Lebanon. He completed his theological studies on 2 August 1896 and adopted the religious name of Ignatius in honor of St. Ignatius of Antioch. During the years 1897–1910, Maloyan served the Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Alexandria as a parish priest in Alexandria and Cairo. Maloyan began serving in Constantinople as an assistant to the Armenian Catholic Patriarch, Paul Petros XII Sabbaghian in 1904. According to historian Charles A. Frazee, the Patriarch chose to continue the policies of his predecessor and did not protest against Turkish and Kurdish massacres of his faithful, but instead focused upon giving humanitarian relief to the survivors. After the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, however, the Patriarch came under attack by some Catholic Armenians, who considered him, "an unworthy prelate". Having little desire for conflict, Patriarch Paul Petros submitted his resignation to Pope Pius X in August 1910. The National Council of the Armenian Catholic Church accordingly met and, on April 23, 1911, unanimously selected the Bishop of Adana as Paul Petros XIII Terzian.