Maloyan was born in Mardin in 1869, educated at Bzommar, and made archbishop of Mardin in 1911. In June 1915 he was arrested with hundreds of the Armenian men of the city, tortured over several days, and offered his life in exchange for conversion to Islam; the account of his refusal comes from survivors of the column. He was killed on 11 June 1915 with a large group of his people. His beatification on 7 October 2001 was the first formal Catholic recognition of an Armenian victim of 1915 as a martyr. The church lost seven bishops, well over a hundred priests and most of its Anatolian parishes in the same period.