PITTSBURGH — Archbishop Kyrill, who headed the Pittsburgh-based diocese for the Orthodox Church in America, is dead.

Kyrill died Sunday at the Cranberry Place Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Cranberry. He was 87 and had been in failing health for the past year, according to a news release on the Orthodox Church of America Web site.

Born Ilia Yonchev in Bulgaria, he became the Bulgarian Orthodox bishop of Toledo and Toronto in 1964 and headed the Bulgarian Diocese of the United States and Canada.

In 1976, he united the Bulgarian Diocese to the Orthodox Church of America — an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church — and, two years later, he was chosen to head the Archdiocese of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. He was elevated to the position of archbishop in 1992.

Kyrill will lie in state at St. George Bulgarian Orthodox Cathedral in Rossford, Ohio, today.

On Thursday, he will lie in state at St. Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Cathedral in McCandless.

A rite of burial will be held Thursday night at St. Alexander Cathedral, followed by a divine liturgy and burial on Friday, the church said.