1859–1923
Metropolitan of Iconium, numbered among the hierarchs martyred during the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922.
The Holy Hieromartyr Prokopios, Metropolitan of Iconium
Prokopios Lazaridis (c. 1859–1923) was an Orthodox hierarch of Asia Minor who served as Metropolitan of Iconium from 1911 until his death in 1923. He is numbered among the hierarchs martyred during the persecution of the Greek Orthodox of Anatolia surrounding the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922.
Born in Tyana in the Konya region of the Ottoman Empire and educated at the Halki Seminary in Constantinople, he rose through a succession of episcopal sees before opposing Turkish nationalist efforts to bring the Orthodox Church under state control through a separate, Turkish-language Turkish Orthodox Church. Imprisoned and coerced over the final years of his life, he died in the prison at Kayseri in 1923.
He was canonized by the Church of Greece in 1992 and is commemorated together with Saint Chrysostomos of Smyrna and other hierarchs of the Catastrophe on the Sunday before the Elevation of the Cross.
After studying at the Halki Seminary from 1875, Prokopios Lazaridis served in a succession of episcopal sees. According to one account he was Bishop of Amphipolis (1894–1899) before becoming Metropolitan of Dyrrachium (modern Durrës, Albania) in 1899.
In 1906 he was installed as head of the Metropolis of Philadelphia (Alaşehir, in Asia Minor), and in 1911 he was promoted to Metropolitan of Iconium (modern Konya), the see he would hold until his death in 1923.
During the conflict of 1919–1922, Turkish nationalist authorities sought to control the Orthodox Church by establishing a separate Turkish Orthodox Church at Kayseri, led by Papa Eftim and using only the Turkish language. Orthodox clergy were pressured to endorse this body, and those who refused faced severe persecution.
Lazaridis opposed these developments and attempted to mediate over the administration of Anatolian Orthodoxy. On September 20, 1920, he was imprisoned together with the local Armenian bishop, and was held at the prison in Erzurum from October 1920 until May 1922. After his release he met Mustafa Kemal in Ankara to press his opposition to the ecclesiastical dispute, but was rejected.
At a council in January 1923 he was compelled to proclaim the Turkish Orthodox Church. Sources record that he and other hierarchs were forced into arbitrary and uncanonical actions under this coercion. He died in the prison at Kayseri on April 20, 1923.
Prokopios was canonized as a Hieromartyr by the Church of Greece on November 4, 1992. He is commemorated on the Sunday before the Exaltation of the Honorable Cross (falling between September 7 and 13).
By an encyclical of the Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (1993), he is commemorated alongside four other hierarchs of the Asia Minor Catastrophe — Chrysostomos, Ambrose, Gregory, and Euthymios — who suffered during the same persecution.
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