Blessed Leonardo Melki and Tommaso Saleh

The martyrdom of Leonardo Melki and Tommaso Saleh belongs to the Armenian genocide, which also swept up Christians of other rites. From the end of the nineteenth century the Ottoman authorities had ordered the elimination of Armenians and Christians, and the persecution grew violent after the First World War began, when the nationalist Young Turks set out to extinguish the religious minorities as well. In November 1914 the government asked all authorities to report the Capuchin friaries of the Mesopotamian region as foreign to the Empire and hostile to Islam. Leonardo Melki was born at Baabdath in Lebanon in 1881, entered the Capuchins in 1895, professed in 1900 and was ordained in 1904; sent to Mesopotamia, at Urfa and then Mardin, he directed the mission school and worked among the young.

Arrested on 5 June 1915 and tortured, repeatedly offered his life if he would embrace Islam, he was added on 11 June to a convoy of 416 prisoners bound for Diyarbakır, where all refused apostasy and were killed. Tommaso Saleh, born at Baabdath about 1879, professed the same day and was ordained in 1904, and worked with him at Mardin.