Prokopios of Iconium

Saint Prokopios, Hieromartyr, Metropolitan of Iconium (Konya), was a Greek hierarch of Asia Minor, born in 1859 at Tyana and dead in isolation, as a prisoner, on 20 April 1923, in the wake of the Great Catastrophe of Asia Minor. He defended the Church in Anatolia from the attempt to detach it from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and create a "Turkish Orthodox Church", and suffered for it. The Church of Greece canonized him in 1992, with other new martyrs of Asia Minor. He is commemorated on 20 April and on the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Youth

Prokopios Lazaridis was born in 1859 at Tyana in the province of Iconium, to Greek Orthodox parents. He graduated in 1889 from the Theological School at Halki and served as deacon and priest in the metropolises of Melnik (in Macedonia), Nicaea and Nicomedia. He was archdeacon of Metropolitan Prokopios of Melnik; in June 1890 he led the committee that reformed the old regulation of the Greek community of Melnik, which ended party quarrels among the Greeks. As preacher in the metropolis of Melnik he pleased the Christian population, which for many years had lacked preaching, and the thank-⁠you letters of the communities of Petrich and Kato Dzhumaya show his skill as preacher and his good use of the Greek language and of Turkish, which he used to be understood by all. He stayed at Melnik until the end of May 1891, a few months before the death of Metropolitan Prokopios, in August of that year.

At the end of May 1891 he was engaged as preacher in the district of Ada Pazarı in Nicomedia, where he was ordained priest, and later protosyncellus at the metropolis of Nicaea. On 14 February 1893 he was a candidate in the election of an auxiliary bishop at Melnik, but was not chosen. He was consecrated on 13 March 1894 titular Bishop of Amphipolis, at Vlanga, by Metropolitan Philotheos of Nicomedia, and worked as vicar of the archbishopric of Constantinople. In 1898 he was sent as patriarchal exarch to Macedonia, to the monasteries of Saint Anastasia Pharmakolytria and Eikosifoinissa on Pangaion, to bring peace to the monastic communities there.

Metropolitan

He was Metropolitan of Dyrrachion (Durrës) from 1899 to 1906, where he cared for the spiritual formation of his flock and for the support of the crypto-⁠Christians of the Spathia district of Northern Epirus; as synodal metropolitan he raised the question of the Latinization of the Orthodox of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Ottoman administration, disturbed by his work among the crypto-⁠Christians, asked for and obtained his removal. He was then Metropolitan of Philadelphia (1906 to 1911). In 1911 he was elected Metropolitan of Iconium, where he had a multiple work, pastoral, national and educational: he founded new Greek communities, opened many schools and built churches. Defending the Orthodox faith, he stood at the head of the opposition to the attempt of the Young Turks to organize a Turkish-⁠Orthodox "Church", independent of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which used only the Turkish language, to mislead the faithful.

During the Greco-⁠Turkish War (1919 to 1922), the Turkish nationalist authorities, wishing to take the Orthodox Church under their control, founded at Kayseri the "Turkish Orthodox Church" and put Fr Eftim Karahisaridis at its head. Prokopios opposed and sought a solution for the leadership of the Orthodox Church in Anatolia. For his intervention Mustafa Kemal ordered his exile from Iconium; on 20 September 1920 he was imprisoned, together with the Armenian bishop of Konya and over two hundred Muslim notables of the region, on the charge of having supported the anti-⁠Kemalist movement of Mehmet Delibash. He was then sent to Erzurum, where he stayed from October 1920 to May 1922. Soon after his release he went to Ankara and asked Mustafa Kemal not to interfere in the church dispute, but his proposal was rejected. In January 1923 he presided at the council at which he was forced to proclaim the "Turkish Orthodox Church"; Turkish interest declined, however, after the Greek defeat in Anatolia and the deportation of the Greek communities. He was imprisoned again and, after many sufferings of soul and body, gave up his soul, isolated, on 20 April 1923, in the monastery of Saint John the Forerunner at Zincidere (Flavianá), near Caesarea, by some sources probably poisoned.

Canonization

The martyr Prokopios was canonized in 1992 by the Church of Greece, together with the martyred metropolitans Chrysostom of Smyrna, Gregory of Kydonies, Ambrose of Moschonisia, Euthymios of Zela and the other new martyrs of Asia Minor, and by decision of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1993 their commemoration was set on the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, between 7 and 13 September.