PriestMartyr Zacharias, Bishop of Corinth

Commemorated on March 30

      PriestMartyr Zacharias, Bishop of Corinth, suffered for Christ under the Turks in 1684. The Turk-mussulmans accused him of secret correspondence with the Franks (French), whom the saint supposedly would have appealed to and promised to aid them seize the city. The moslems in a rage fell upon the Christian bishop and, shackled in chains and subjected to beatings, they led him to trial. The judge without interrogation demanded that Sainted Zacharias accept Islam and, when he heard the negative answer of the bishop, he gave orders for him to be beaten without mercy. They then locked up the confessor of Christ in prison, where the mahometan fanatics did not cease with beating the martyr. The Priestmartyr Zacharias was beheaded on the third Sunday following the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross.  

© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.