FR. MALACHI MARTIN DEAD AT 78
by Fr. Charles Fiore
AUTHOR OF 16 BOOKS MOURNED BY COUNTLESS FRIENDS, ASSOCIATES,
READERS
Father Malachi Brendan Martin, Roman Catholic priest, widely
renowned theologian and bestselling author of 16 books, died in
New York City on Tuesday, July 27, 1999, following a stroke.
Father Martin was born in Kerry, Ireland on July 23. 1921. He was
educated at Belvedere College, and entered the Society of Jesus
in 1939. He studied at the National University where he took a
bachelor's degree in Semitic languages and Oriental history with
parallel studies in Assyriology at Trinity College. He held
degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Semitic Languages, Archeology
and Oriental History from the University of Louvain, Belgium. He
was ordained to the priesthood on the Feast of the Assumption,
August 15, 1954.
Father Martin did parallel studies at Hebrew University,
Jerusalem, and at Oxford University, specializing in
intertestamentary studies and knowledge of Jesus as transmitted
in Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts. Additional subjects of intense
study for him during his formal education included rational
psychology, experimental psychology, physics and anthropology.
He did early and seminal work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and
published some two dozen articles on Semitic paleography in
learned journals. The first of his 16 books was the two-volume
work, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
>From 1958 until 1964 Malachi Martin served in Rome, where he
was a close associate of, and carried out many sensitive missions
for the renowned Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea, and for Pope John
Xxiii.
While in Rome he was also Professor at
the Pontifical Biblical 1nstitute of the Vatican, where he taught
Hebrew, Aramaic, Paleography and Scripture.
After twenty-five years as a Jesuit,
Father Martin was released, at his own request by Paul VI from
his vows of poverty and obedience in 1964.
Following a brief stay in Paris, he moved to New York, where
until his final illness and death, he continued his apostolic
service as a priest to what became a vast and loyal national and
international "congregation" of Catholics and non-Catholics-
He amassed a decades-long record of critical and commercial
success as the author of sixteen bestselling books, many of which
have defied trends and fads to remain in print for ten or even
twenty years or more.
He wrote many articles and pamphlets, and recorded many audio
tapes, and was widely sought after on television and radio as an
authoritative commentator on Vatican affairs, and "one of
the ten best media guests in the country."
Father Martin proved himself without equal in what The Washington
Post called his "uncanny accuracy" with which he not
only reported but predicted the hidden, inside geopolitics of the
Vatican and its complex global dealings with governments and
nations. Among his legacies is a decades-long public record of
extraordinary understanding of the meaning and implications of
events --- a record of predicting the unthinkable and getting it
right every time; of foretelling events over the last thirty
years that seemed unbelievable at first, but that in the end
changed the lives of generations of men and women in every
quarter of the world.
Among Malachi Martin's most famous books are Hostage to the Devil,
The Final Conclave, Vatican, The Jesuits and The Keys of This
Blood. His most recently published book, Windswept House: A
Vatican Novel is widely read as a candid profile of the troubled
state of the Roman Catholic Church today, and as a blueprint for
its near future as the pontificate of John Paul II nears its end.
At his death, Father Martin was at work on what he said would be
his most controversial and important book. Entitled Primacy: How
the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of the
New World Order, it was to deal with power and the papacy, and
analyzed the revolutionary shift in the ancient dogma of primacy
that lies at the heart of what many now see as the first
breakdown of papal power in two millennia. It was to be a book
about the Vatican's political landscape as we approach a new
pontificate, and as a book of predictions about papal power and
the world in the first decades of the new millennium.
The many reviews of Malachi Martin Is books over the years stand
as eloquent testimony to his importance as an author, his talent
and candor, his courage and impact - "No spiritual journey
is complete without a Vatican page-turner by Malachi Martin,"
said Forbes. "In biblical times they would have called film
a prophet, " said The Dallas Morning News. "He fetches
Christianity onto the stage of history," wrote The New York
Times.
"It is to Martin's credit," wrote the Sacramento Bee,"that
his real-live 'fictional' Cardinals have flesh, bone and blood.
And sometimes the heart of a South Chicago ward heeler. "
From The Houston Chronicle: "Whether you are Christian or
Muslim or whatever, you will find that the influence of the
Vatican can af fect your own life. " And from Alan Caruba in
The Jewish
Future: "The battle that concerns Martin is the fundamental
survival of belief in God, and the struggle that supercedes our
individual faiths is the one between us and those who would
destroy all faiths."
Father Malachi Martin is survived by family members in Ireland.
- Fr. Charles Fiore