Patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church. A native of Cairo, Pierre Taza was the fifth of eight children born to a displaced couple who fled the Mardin province in southeastern Turkey to Egypt in 1915 following a campaign by the Ottoman government to rid of the minority Armenian community then present in the country. Receiving his education under the care of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in his native city, later furthering his studies in Rome at the Armenian Leonine Pontifical College and the Pontifical Gregorian University. Ordained priest in Cairo on August 15, 1965, he served at the local Armenian Catholic Cathedral of the Annunciation until 1968, when he was named curate of the parish of Saint Therese of Heliopolis in the same city, a position he held up till 1990. Elected bishop of the eparchy of Iskanderiya, he received his episcopal consecration on February 18, 1990 from Patriarch Jean Pierre XVIII Kasparian ICPB. Member of the Synod of the Bishops of the Catholic Armenian Patriarch Church and general secretary of the Pastoral Council of the Catholic Church of Egypt, upon the death of the named Patriarch Kasparian, he was selected as his successor as patriarch of the Armenian patriarchate of Cilicia, being confirmed by the Holy See two days later. Assuming the name Nerses Bedros XIX, Tarmouni was widely known for serving the Armenian community and promoting its interests. Visiting Armenian communities in Europe, the Middle East and the United States in order to boost Armenian catholic schools, at his request, the archbishop of Mardine, Ignace Maloyan, martyr of the Armenian genocide of 1915, was proclaimed blessed by Pope John Paul II at St. Peter's Square in Rome in 2001. Sending the first parish priest to Moscow the following year in attempt to begin a new mission among the Armenian Catholics in Russia following the opening in 1991 of missions in Armenia and Georgia, shortly before his sudden death due to a heart attack, he was in close collaboration with Pope Francis who from his end had Armenian monk Saint Gregory of Narek declared a Doctor of the Church on the occasion of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide.