Career
Gewargis d"Beth Abuna came, as the last name says, from the house in which up to the first generation after unification of the "Patriarchate of the plains" with the Pope in Rome, the charge of Catholicos-Patriarch of the Chaldean Church based in Alqosh had been. Thereafter, he worked in various places in rural Alqosh and in 1908 returned to the urban community of Assyrian Catholics. On May 2, 1909, he was consecrated in Qudshanis as Metropolitan of Alqosh, by Catholicos Patriarch March Shimun XXI and given the name March Eliya (Elijah).
He was unable to establish a diocese and so returned to Qudshanis.
1912, March Shimun XXI entrusted him with the Diocese of Taimar, in the area around Van, in what is today"s southeastern Turkey. There, in January 1916, he joined as a companion of the Catholicos-Patriarch in his negotiations with the Russians, and then apparently took on the expulsion of the Assyrian mountain tribes in the Assyrian Genocide.
After the killing of Shimun XXI, March Eliya directed the burial of the Patriarch on 6 March 1918 in the cemetery of the Armenian Church of Khosroabad (Khosrova) and belonged to the Company-consecrators of March Polos Shimun XXII on 14 April 1918 in Urmia. In October 1920, he signed the letter of appointment of March Abimalek Timothy from India to the Catholicos-Patriarch March Shimun XXIII. He spent the following three decades in Alqosh and elsewhere with his relatives until his repose in 1955.