At twelve noon on Saturday, 28 March 2026, the Funeral Service of the blessed Archimandrite Timotheos, who had departed unto the Lord three days earlier, was celebrated in the Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation of the Theotokos in Nazareth.
During his long ministry, he served in various ministries of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, most especially at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Tiberias.
The Funeral Service was presided over by Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem, along with Metropolitan Kyriakos of Nazareth, Archbishop Aristarchos of Constantina, Metropolitan Makarios of Acre, Holy Sepulchre Hieromonks, local clergy, and members of the flock of Galilee, who gathered in prayer to express their esteem and respect for his devoted priestly and pastoral ministry.
The funeral obituary composed by the Elder Chief Secretary, Archbishop Aristarchos of Constantina, was delivered by Fr Issa Mousleh, as follows:
“Your Beatitude, Father and Master,
Your Eminence Metropolitan Kyriakos of Nazareth,
Reverend Fathers,
Members of the flock of Nazareth,
Beloved brethren in Christ,With deep sorrow, yet sorrow in the Lord, the sorrow with which the Lord wept before the tomb of His four-days-dead friend Lazarus of Bethany in Bethany, and the sorrow and anguish He endured before His Passion in Garden of Gethsemane, though (we are) consoled by His Cross and Resurrection, we stand before the body of our beloved brother Archimandrite Timotheos Nikolaou, who has departed for heaven.
Even though we grieve at the separation, we rejoice in the hope of life in Christ beyond the laying aside of our earthly tabernacle. Such is the Divine Providence for the healing of death, which man brought upon himself through his apostasy from God. Death is overcome through death itself: through our surrender to God without murmuring, through our burial together with the death of His Son. Even the Lord Himself did not refuse the cup of death, but tasted it willingly, offering Himself to God the Father for our sake and redeeming us by His precious Blood.
As we accompany today our brother Archimandrite Timotheos with hope of his participation in the blessings of the heavenly Kingdom, we fittingly recall his earthly life. Being a nephew of the late Patriarch of Jerusalem Timotheus of Jerusalem, he came at a young age from his native Samos to the Holy City, the city of Golgotha and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, in the year 1952, during the Patriarchate of the same blessed Patriarch Timotheos.
He studied at the Patriarchal Priestly School of Saint Demetrios and, upon graduation, was tonsured a monk, joining the Holy Sepulchre Brotherhood by the late Patriarch of Jerusalem Benedictos in 1958. Soon thereafter, he was ordained deacon and served with devotion, zeal, and obedience in the ministries entrusted to him: as minister in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Secretary of the Audit Committee and of the journal New Zion, deacon serving in the monastic church of Saints Constantine and Helen, Secretary of the Financial Committee, and supervisor at the Patriarchal School.
After his ordination to the priesthood and his elevation to Archimandrite in 1971, he served as Treasurer of the Holy Community and as Hegumen of the Monasteries of the Holy Archangels, Saint Nicholas, Saint George of Beit Jala, and of the community of Beit Jala.
For many years, however, his principal ministry was at the Holy Monastery of the Twelve Apostles in Tiberias, where he was always hospitable toward pilgrims, gentle, simple, and humble. He maintained and restored the monastery, adorning its church with Byzantine icons and a carved iconostasis through the support of pious pilgrims, especially the association of the blessed pilgrim Eleftherios Gasparis. While serving as Hegumen of Tiberias, he also ministered as pastor of the nearby Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox community of Tur’an. In recognition of his conscientious and devoted Holy Sepulchre ministry, he was appointed a member of the Holy and Sacred Synod by His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos.
When his health declined in recent years, he received care in a nursing home in Nazareth through the care of Metropolitan Kyriakos of Nazareth and the Patriarchate. During his illness, he continued in prayer and prepared himself for the day on which he surrendered his final breath to the Lord, Thursday, 13th/26th March 2026.
As we now accompany our beloved brother to his final earthly resting place and to his unshaken and eternal dwelling in heaven, we beseech our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has authority to bind and loose sins and has abolished the dominion of death, that He may look mercifully upon His servant, who faithfully ministered unto Him in the priesthood; that He may overlook whatever he may have sinned as man, whether willingly or unwillingly, and number him in Paradise, granting him the enjoyment of the everlasting consoling light of the thrice-radiant Godhead.
May his memory be eternal!”
