The life of St Chrysostom of Smyrna
Restored to his see after the Greek landing at Smyrna in 1919, he remained devoted to his flock through the difficult years that followed, refusing offers of safe passage abroad as the Greco-Turkish War turned against Greece.
When Turkish forces retook Smyrna in September 1922, Chrysostomos chose to stay rather than flee. He was summoned before the Turkish commander, questioned, and then handed over to a mob that seized and killed him in the street, a death that eyewitnesses described as brutal even by the standards of that violent week. He was one of several hierarchs and clergy of Asia Minor who died at that time, and the Church of Greece numbered him among the saints in 1992, honoring him and his companions as martyrs of the Asia Minor catastrophe.
