His Beatitude Gregory Peter XX Gabroyan, the Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church passed away on Tuesday in Beirut. He was 86.
Funeral services will include a public visitation on Friday, May 28 at the Patriarch’s residence at the Our Lady of Annunciation Patriarchal Chapel in Beirut. A funeral Mass will be said on Saturday, May 29 at the St. Gregory the Illuminator–St. Elias Cathedral. Interment will be held immediately following the Mass at the Cemetery of the Patriarchs in the Monastery of Our Lady of Assumption, See of the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate, in Bzommar-Keserwan, Lebanon.
Gabroyan was enthroned as the 20th Armenian Catholic Patriarch of Cilicia on August 9, 2015 in Bzommar, Lebanon, succeeding Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, who had died in June of that year. After his election, he requested and was granted ecclesial communion with Pope Francis.
Gabroyan was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1934. Receiving his early education in Lebanon, Gabroyan was sent to Italy to continue his higher studies at the Armenian Leonine Pontifical College in Rome and graduate studies in philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, after which he returned to Lebanon and was ordained priest on March 28, 1959.
Gabroyan became an instructor in Bzommar Monastery School in 1960 and from 1962 to 1996 served as principal of the Armenian Catholic Mesrobian Secondary School in Bourj Hammoud, From 1969 to 1975 he also headed the Bzommar Convent School and was the secretary to the Convent’s executive council.
In 1976, he was appointed for serving the Armenian Catholics in France and was ordained as bishop on February 13, 1977 by Catholicos-Patriarch Hemayag Bedros XVII Ghedighian serving as Apostolic Exarch in France from 1977 to 1986 and as Primate and Armenian Catholic Eparch and Bishop of France at the Éparchie Sainte-Croix-de-Paris des Arméniens, from 1986 to April 2013.
