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Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II of the Georgian Orthodox Church, among the most monumental figures in Georgia’s modern history, died Tuesday at the age of 93.
His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, in a telegram to the Holy Synod of Georgia, mourned the loss of the Patriarch with whom the ties between Constantinople and Tbilisi had grown uniquely strong.
“We pray wholeheartedly for the repose of his soul in the Land of the Living,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew wrote, “and that Christ, the Builder and Chief Shepherd of the Church, may raise up a worthy successor to him.”
Metropolitan Shio Mujiri, who assumed the church’s leadership in the interim, described Ilia II as an “epoch-making” figure whose passing represented a profound loss for Orthodox Christianity around the world.
The patriarch was born Irakli Ghudushauri-Shiolashvili on January 4, 1933, in what is now Vladikavkaz, Russia, to a family with ancestral ties to Georgia’s Kazbegi highlands. He entered monastic life as a youth, studying at the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy before his ordination as a hieromonk in 1959. He was elevated to bishop four years later and went on to lead the Mtskheta Theological Seminary, at the time the only institution of clerical formation in Georgia.
He was elected the 141st Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia in December 1977, at 43 years old, inheriting a church that had been weakened by decades of Soviet anti-religious persecution. Over the nearly five decades that followed, Ilia II reversed that decline: the number of dioceses more than doubled, dozens of monasteries were founded, and hundreds of new clergy were ordained.
He also shepherded the church through Georgia’s political transformation. In April 1989, as Soviet troops prepared to confront pro-independence demonstrators in Tbilisi, Ilia II stood among the protesters and implored the crowd to seek shelter in the nearby Kashueti Church. He later oversaw the production of a contemporary Georgian-language Bible, a landmark of both religious and cultural renewal.
Georgia, which embraced Christianity as its official faith in the fourth century, is among the most devout Orthodox nations in the world. Under Patriarch Ilia II the church has commanded broad loyalty across a society. A concordat signed in 2002 with then-President Eduard Shevardnadze elevated the church’s standing, extending to its protections and privileges in education, cultural preservation, and taxation.
The Georgian government announced a period of national mourning following his death, with flags lowered at public buildings across the country.
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