Leonard Melki

Leonard Melki (4 October 1881[1] – 11 June 1915) – born Yūsuf Habīb Melkī and in religious Līūnār from B'abdāt – was a Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.

Melki became a priest before serving as a preacher and teacher in different stations of the Mission of Armenia and Mesopotamia of the Capuchin Order.

[5] Léonard received his early education, like all Christian Lebanese children at the time, under an oak tree in his home town of Baabdat.

As a result of the Capuchin presence in Baabdat, Léonard became interested in joining their Order and consequently continued his education under them where he was sent to the San Stefano seminary near Istanbul in April, 1895.

Then he went to the major seminary in Budja where he received both the tonsure and the minor orders on February 10, 1901, before being made a deacon on July 24, 1904.

Resultantly, he was tortured by the Turks in various ways from being beaten and pulled by the beard to being pushed down long staircases inside the fortress of Mardin where he was being detained.

In addition to this, he was hung upside down from his feet for hours and experienced the painful torture of having his fingernails and toenails removed.

After he spent one week being tortured in the fortress, Melkī along with hundreds of other Christian prisoners from Mardin were forced to walk kilometers outside the town towards the desert to be killed.

[10] The beatification process started in the initial phase after the forum for the beatification was transferred to Beirut from the Anatolia apostolic vicariate on August 30, 2005; he was titled as a Servant of God on October 3, 2005, under Pope Benedict XVI after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued the official "nihil obstat" to the cause.

Pope Francis provided his final assent and approved the beatification on October 27, 2020, which meant that Melki could be beatified.