Thousands of mourners gathered in Georgia’s capital to say goodbye to Ilia II, who had led the country’s Orthodox faithful for 49 years.
Orthodox Times reported that many people attending the farewell were visibly grieving. The service took place at Tbilisi’s main Holy Trinity church and was led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who arrived in the city on Sunday.
Georgia Today used his formal designation, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, and reported that his burial took place at Sioni Cathedral.
The two locations served different roles in the day’s observances: the large public liturgy was conducted at Holy Trinity, while Sioni became the burial place. The supplied reports establish those details but provide little further information about the procession between them.
Ilia II’s 49 years of leadership made the gathering a national-scale religious farewell. The evidence packet does not state when he died, his age at death, who would succeed him or which civil officials attended. Those details are therefore not included.
The Orthodox Times extract also contained unrelated updates about other church figures dated months later. They were not part of its account of the March 22 ceremony and were excluded from this report.
What remains supported is a concise record of the day: a crowd numbering in the thousands assembled in Tbilisi, Bartholomew presided over the service, and the late Georgian patriarch was laid in Sioni Cathedral after nearly half a century leading his church.
