Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church, passed away this morning in Lebanon at the hospital where he was being treated.
His doctor Nabil Huri said that the Patriarch had passed away at 8.45 am on 25 June, 2015, and stated his cause of death as ‘a heart attack’.
Nerses Bedros XIX was born as the fifth child of a family with 8 children in Cairo on 17 January 1940, and had been enthroned and received the ecclesiastical communion from Pope John Paul II in 1999, after his election by the Bishops of the Holy Synod of the Armenian Catholic Church as Catholicos Patriarch of Cilicia of Armenian Catholics.
Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX had most recently attended the centennial mass in commemoration of the victims of the 1915 Genocide held on April 12 at the Vatican. Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX had made a great contribution to the realization of this mass that also saw Saint Krikor Naregatsi (Gregory of Narek) declared a Doctor of the Universal Church.
Details of the funeral of the Patriarch will be announced later.
