Christian feast day: Blessed Gomidas Keumurdjian

Gomidas Keumurdjian, known as Cosma de Carbognano, was a married priest of the Armenian Apostolic Church and later a convert to the Armenian Catholic Church. At the insistence of the Armenian Apostolic Patriarch of Constantinople, Ter Gomidas was tried before an Islamic court and sentenced to death by the Qadi for treason against the Ottoman Sultan and for secretly baptizing Muslims. Gomidas, however, was offered a full pardon and his immediate release in return for his conversion to Islam, but he repeatedly refused and was publicly executed by beheading in the Samatya quarter of Istanbul. He is regarded by the Catholic Church as a martyr and has been venerated as a Blessed since 1929.