Father Samuel

In 2012 he participated in the international counter-jihad conference in Brussels.

In 2006, the Belgian judiciary decided that the priest will have to stand trial before the penal court in Charleroi. He reacted by repeating his "time bomb" statement and added that he would be honoured if he had to go to jail for speaking his mind. He added that Jesus, too, had been convicted.

Samuel comes from a Syriac Orthodox family. In his early years he became a Syriac Orthodox monk in the monastery of Deyrulzafaran. When Samuel fled to Lebanon after a dispute with the archbishop of Deyrulzafaran, Samuel became a Syrian Catholic priest. In the mid-1970s he fled to Belgium, claiming that the Aramaic Christians were being persecuted in Turkey. He became a Belgian and adopted the surname of Boniface – "he who does good things." He was appointed to the diocese of Tournai, but clashed with the bishop. He then bought the St-Antoine-de-Padoue church in Montignies-sur-Sambre. There he conducts the Mass according to the traditional rites of the Catholic Church.

Father Samuel or Père Samuel (born 1942) is a Syriac Orthodox monk-priest. He was formerly incardinated in the Syriac Catholic Church, but due to his perceived bigotry against Islam, he was considered by his Belgian Roman Catholic bishop to be a suspended priest of Aramean origin. His passport gives his name as Charles-Clément Boniface, but he was born in Bağlarbaşı (Arnas) nearby Midyat, Turkey, as Samuel Ozdemir. The latter is a surname the priest dislikes because it was imposed on his family by the Turks. He was suspended in 2011 from celebrating cult and sacrements by the bishop of Tournai.