Malachi Martin

Malachi Brendan Martin (23 July 1921 – 27 July 1999), also known under the pseudonym of Michael Serafian, was an Irish-born American Traditionalist Catholic priest, biblical archaeologist, exorcist, palaeographer, professor, and writer on the Catholic Church.

Ordained as a Jesuit, Martin became Professor of Palaeography at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. From 1958, he served as secretary to Cardinal Augustin Bea during preparations for the Second Vatican Council. Disillusioned by the council, Martin asked to be released from certain aspects of his Jesuit vows in 1964 and moved to New York City.

Martin's 17 novels and non-fiction books were frequently critical of the Catholic hierarchy, who he believed had failed to act on what he called "the Third Prophecy" revealed by the Virgin Mary at Fátima. in which the children were raised speaking Irish at the dinner table. His parents, Conor and Katherine Fitzmaurice Martin, had five sons and five daughters. Four of the five sons became priests, including his younger brother, Francis Xavier Martin.

Martin attended Belvedere College in Dublin, then studied philosophy for three years at University College Dublin. On 6 September 1939, he became a novice with the Society of Jesus. Martin taught for three years, spending four years at Milltown Park, Dublin, and was ordained in August 1954.

Upon completion of his degree course in Dublin, Martin was sent to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where he took a doctorate in archaeology, Oriental history, and Semitic languages.

Work Martin participated in the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and published 24 articles on Semitic palaeography. He did archaeological research and worked extensively on the Byblos syllabary in Byblos, in Tyre, and in the Sinai Peninsula. Martin assisted in his first exorcism while working in Egypt for archaeological research.

Martin's years in Rome coincided with the beginning of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which was to transform the Catholic Church in a way that the initially liberal Martin began to find distressing. He became friends with Monsignor George Gilmary Higgins and Father John Courtney Murray. Martin accompanied Pope Paul VI on a trip to Jordan in January 1964. He resigned his position at the Pontifical Institute in June 1964. He then published Three Popes and the Cardinal: The Church of Pius, John and Paul in its Encounter with Human History (1972) and Jesus Now (1973). In 1970, Martin became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In 1969, Martin received a second Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to write his first of four bestsellers, Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976).

Martin served as religious editor for the National Review from 1972 to 1978. He was interviewed twice by William F. Buckley, Jr. for Firing Line on PBS. He was an editor for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Martin published several works of fiction and non-fiction in the following years:

Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976)

Later life Martin was a periodic guest on Art Bell's radio program, Coast to Coast AM, between 1996 and 1998. The show continues to play tapes of his interviews on Halloween. Martin served as a guest commentator for CNN during the live coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in October 1995.

Death

In 1999, Malachi Martin died in Manhattan of an intracerebral haemorrhage.

Martin's funeral took place in St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in West Orange, New Jersey, before burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Hawthorne, New York.

Work

Writings In 1964, under the pseudonym of "Michael Serafian", Martin wrote The Pilgrim: Pope Paul VI, the Council, & the Church in a Time of Decision. The book contained Martin's views on the Jewish question in Europe and on the Second Vatican Council. Martin's fictional works purported to give detailed insider accounts of Church history during the reigns of Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI (The Pilgrim, Three Popes and the Cardinal, Vatican: A Novel According to Martin, the unreleased third secret of Fatima was that the Soviet Union would be converted to Christianity. The Vatican released what it claimed to be the third secret letter in 2000. This text did not mention Russia or the Soviet Union.

Other theories Martin did not believe in the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Međugorje in what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina. He said that false pretenses were used in obtaining earlier his recommendation. Concerning the Garabandal apparitions, he remained open minded.

In March 1997, Martin claimed on Radio Liberty's Steel on Steel, that two popes were murdered during the 20th century: Pope Pius XI was allegedly murdered by Benito Mussolini, because of his 1931 encyclical, Non abbiamo bisogno, which was critical of the Italian Fascist state. Pope John Paul I was allegedly murdered according to Martin's book, Vatican: A Novel, by Jean-Marie Villot, formerly Cardinal Secretary of State under Pope Paul VI, under orders from the Soviet Union.

Siri theory Martin partially gave credence to the Siri thesis, saying that Cardinal Giuseppe Siri was twice elected pope in papal conclaves, but declined his election after being pressured by so-called worldly forces acting through cardinals present at the conclaves. Martin called this the little brutality. On the one hand, Martin says that Siri was intimidated; on the other hand he says that Siri did indicate that his decision not to accept was made freely. The second election was the Papal conclave, October 1978. Martin said on Steel on Steel in March 1997, that Siri received a written note after his initial election threatening him and his family with death should he accept.

Freemasons Martin claimed that John XXIII and Paul VI were Freemasons during a certain period and that photographs and other detailed documents proving this were in the possession of the Vatican State Secretariat. Description of this incident was embedded as background within a larger discussion of a meeting at the Vatican in the middle of spring 1981 between Pope John Paul II and his six most powerful cardinals. In his book The Final Conclave, published on 1 August 1978, the month of the 1978 conclave that resulted in the 26 August election of Albino Luciani, Martin wrote of the unexpected election of a Cardinal Angelico, a figure that has been interpreted as corresponding to Luciani.

Controversies

Alleged affairs There are several allegations made against Martin of having affairs with women, all released after his death: In his 2002 book Clerical Error: A True Story, the former Vatican correspondent for Time magazine, Robert Blair Kaiser, writes that his marriage was destroyed by an affair between his wife and Martin, which began in 1964 while Kaiser was in Rome covering the Second Vatican Council. Kaiser alleges that Martin was successful for a time in manipulating some members of their common social circle, to the extent that Kaiser was briefly interned at The Institute of Living, a mental hospital in Hartford, Connecticut with ties to the Catholic church, thus helping Martin to discredit him and keeping him away from Rome while Martin continued the affair. In her 2008 book, Queen of the Oil Club: The Intrepid Wanda Jablonski and the Power of Information, Anna Rubino wrote that Martin had a love affair with oil journalist Wanda Jablonski in 1972. According to Rubino's account, the two met in Long Island and then spent time together in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Rubino describes Martin as a man with "a reputation for seducing women." Sarah Colwell claimed in her 2016 memoir Disguised as a Man: Malachi Martin & Me, that she and Martin had a long affair in the 1980s, during which Martin was also involved with other women. Colwell claims that Martin encouraged her to use artificial birth control, including an intrauterine device, despite his public professions of traditionalist Catholicism, and that he was also sexually involved with his wealthy patroness Kakia Vernicos Livanos, the widow of Greek-American shipping magnate George M. Livanos. Martin lived with Livanos in New York City for 27 years, right up to his death. The two are buried together under a single headstone in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Hawthorne. Despite the claim by his defenders that Martin resided with Livanos as a household priest (an arrangement once common among aristocratic Catholic families in Europe), Livanos remained during her lifetime a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Martin himself is quoted as stating that "'In 1965, Mr. Martin received a dispensation from all privileges and obligations deriving from his vows as a Jesuit and from priestly ordination' (Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, 25 June 1997, Prot. N. 04300/65)".

The Daily Catholic said its 2004 statement was based on one by William Kennedy, according to which the declaration of Martin's laicization was mounted in retaliation for his book The Jesuits, which accused the Jesuits of deviating from their original character and mission by embracing liberation theology.

Alleged ordination as a bishop During a videotaped memorial titled Malachi Martin Weeps For His Church, Rama Coomaraswamy claimed that Martin had told him that he had been secretly consecrated a bishop by Pius XII. Martin's mission was to ordain priests and bishops for the underground churches of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Coomaraswamy died in 2006.

Alleged authorship The book The Pilgrim: Pope Paul VI, The Council and The Church in a time of decision was written by Martin under the pseudonym Michael Serafian. This was confirmed by Martin himself and corroborated independently by the Swiss Catholic dissident and priest Hans Küng. Martin related that his choice of surname, Serafian, was due to meeting a carpet dealer in Jerusalem with that name, during the trip of Paul VI to Jordan in January 1964. Serafian is a common Armenian surname. The pseudonym of Xavier Rynne, used to write more than 20 books on Vatican II, is not that of Martin, but of Fr. Francis X. Murphy C.Ss.R. The 1966 article Laures et ermitages du désert d'Egypte published in Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph by the hand of "M. Martin" was written by Maurice Martin, not Malachi Martin.

Joseph Roddy allegations Journalist Joseph Roddy alleged—in a 1966 Look Magazine article about the debate about Jews during the Second Vatican Council —that one and the same person under three different pseudonyms had written or acted on behalf of Jewish interest groups, such as the American Jewish Committee, to influence the outcome of the debates. Roddy wrote that two timely and remunerated 1965 articles were penned under the pseudonym F.E. Cartus, one for Harper's Magazine and one for the American Jewish Committee's magazine Commentary.

In his 2007 book Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, Edward K. Kaplan confirmed that Martin cooperated with the American Jewish Committee during the Council "for a mixture of motives, both lofty and ignoble...[He] primarily advised the committee on theological issues, but he also provided logistical intelligence and copies of restricted documents." It is confirmed in the book that Martin used the pseudonyms Forest and Pushkin.

Alleged Jewish heritage Rumours appearing on various Catholic or sedevacantist websites and magazines alleged that Martin had Jewish ancestry that descended from Iberian Jews who migrated to Medieval Ireland and the Kingdom of England in the 15th century, and also alleged him being an Israeli spy After having made genealogical inquiries with surviving relatives of Martin in Ireland, Kennedy concluded that Martin's father was an Englishman who moved to Ireland and that Martin's mother was Irish on both sides. Fr. Rama Coomasrawamy confirmed this independently. The photograph, published in David Yallop's In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I as number 28 between pages 120 and 121, shows a "Monsignor Martin", visibly different from Malachi Martin. This is a case of mistaken identification: the cleric in the photograph was Jacques-Paul Martin, Prefect of the Casa Pontificia from 1969 to 1986.