The annual solemn ceremony in commemoration of 100,000 Martyrs is being conducted at the Metekhi Bridge in Tbilisi.
On November 12, Georgia’s Catholicos-Patriach Ilia II called on Mayor of Tbilisi to think about the construction of a Church of the 100,000 Martyrs in Tbilisi. “We have a young, energetic Mayor, and I hope he will consider having a church or avenue named in memory of the 100,000 martyrs,” Catholicos-Patriarch said during yesterday’s Sunday sermon.
Kaladze responded to the initiative, saying “City Hall will do its best to implement this interesting project.”
The Hundred Thousand Martyrs are saints of the Georgian Orthodox Church who were put to death, according to a 14th-century anonymous Georgian source ‘Chronicle of a Hundred Years,’ for not renouncing Christianity. Their deaths came on the order of the Khwarezmid Sultan Jalal ad-Din upon his capture of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in 1226. The Georgian Church commemorates the martyrs on 13 November.