Gregory was born in the kingdom of Vaspurakan, in the southern Armenian highlands near Lake Van. His father was a bishop, his mother died when Gregory was young; he and his elder brother were given to their great-uncle Anania, abbot of the monastery of Narek, to be raised. There Gregory spent the rest of his life as a monk and theologian.
His masterwork is the Book of Lamentations (also called Narek or Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart) — a collection of ninety-five long meditative prayers, composed near the end of his life. Each prayer is addressed personally to God, and each is at once a confession of sin in the strongest patristic language and an act of confident hope in mercy. The work has been the spiritual companion of the Armenian people for a thousand years — read at sickbeds, copied on the inside of houses, placed under the pillows of the dying.
Pope Francis declared him a Doctor of the Universal Church on April 12, 2015 — the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. The declaration was a major ecumenical gesture: Gregory belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church, not formally in communion with Rome, but his sanctity and orthodoxy were recognised by the universal Catholic Church.