CWN - The head of the Armenian Catholic Church has died of a heart attack, according to a Lebanese media report.

Born in Cairo in 1940 and ordained to the priesthood in 1965, Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni was appointed the Armenian Catholic bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in 1989 and elected patriarch in 1999.

The Armenian Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, has 376,000 members. Headquartered in Beirut, it has eparchies (dioceses) in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and the United States.