Believers Eastern Church Metropolitan Moran Mor Athanasius Yohan, also known as KP Yohannan, who was critically injured in a car accident in the US, died of cardiac arrest on Wednesday.
The 74-year-old pastor was under intensive care at a hospital in Dallas, following a hit and run accident that happened during his morning walk. He underwent emergency surgery.
“He passed away due to sudden cardiac arrest in a hospital in Dallas, Texas, where he had been receiving treatment since his accident,” a church official said.
The Believers Eastern Church, under his guidance, has spread out to 12,000 parishes in Asia and Africa, in two decades.
He has written more than 200 books on Christian living.
His radio broadcast “Road to Reality” was heard on more than 900 radio stations in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia.
“Beloved Archbishops, Bishops, Fathers and all the Faithful With profound grief and sorrow, we would like inform that His Holiness Athanasius Yohan I our honourable Metropolitan reposed in the Lord this evening, the 8th of May 2024. He passed away due to sudden cardiac arrest in a hospital in Dallas, Texas where he had been receiving treatment since his accident. Further details will be announced soon by the Holy Synod. May his memory be eternal!, ” a Facebook post shared by Believers Eastern Church read.
Born as K P Yohannan in 1950 in the village of Niranam near Thiruvalla, he dedicated his life to serving God after finishing high school at the age of sixteen. He was 16 when he joined the Operation Mobilisation (OM), an evangelical missions movement, and served them for eight years in the Indian subcontinent. He continued to have close working relationship and friendship with the late George Verwer, OM’s founder. Through an invitation from Dr. W.A. Criswell, Yohannan moved to the United States in 1974 for theological studies at Criswell College (at the time Criswell Bible Institute) in Dallas, Texas. He graduated with a B.A. in Biblical Studies, becoming the school’s first international student to graduate.
On February 6, 2003, he was consecrated and elevated as the Metropolitan of the Believers Eastern Church.
In accordance with the Orthodox Christian tradition, he took the name Athanasius Yohan in honour of his beloved patron saints, St Athanasius, the defender of orthodoxy, and St John (Yohan) the Apostle and Evangelist. He is also the founding patron of the St Ignatius Theological Seminary, the Believers Church Residential School, and the Believers Church Medical College & Hospital in Thiruvalla, in India’s Kerala state.
Yohannan is married to Gisela, who served with him in Operation Mobilisation. They met in 1973. In 1974, they were married in Germany, Gisela’s birth country. They have two children, Daniel and Sarah.
(Picture Courtesy: www.kpyohannan.org)
