He was born in Mosul – Iraq in 1922. He completed his primary education at the Dominican Fathers School in Mosul, and his high school studies at the Chaldean Patriarchate Seminary in the same city. He completed his postgraduate studies at the Pontifical Colleges in Rome 1936-1947. He was ordained a priest and obtained his Doctorate degree in Philosophy from the Pontifical Urban University (Pontificia Università Urbania), treating the subject of “Al-Ghazali’s Religious Philosophy”. He obtained a Doctorate in Theology from the Pontifical Urban University on “The Great Patriarch Timotheus and the situation of Christians during the Abbasid era”. He obtained a diploma in Canon Law and Civil Law from the Pontifical Lateran University in 1946. He was professor of philosophy and theology at the Chaldean Patriarchal Seminary in Mosul, and professor of religion at the public high schools in Mosul between the years 1948 and 1956. He served as parish priest and a responsible for the Christians in all Iraqi Oil Company sites from Kirkuk to Tripoli in Lebanon between 1950 and 1956. in 1956, he served as Patriarchal Vicar of the Chaldean Eparchy in Kirkuk, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. He was elected Bishop of the Chaldean Eparchy in Amadiya in Kurdistan (Iraq) in 1957. He was transferred to the Chaldean Eparchy in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1966. He was elected Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in the Holy Synod that was held in Baghdad between 15 and 21 May 1989. He spent 23 years as head of the Chaldean Church in Lebanon and was one of the founders of the Assembly of the Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops in Lebanon. He participated in several committees (Executive Committee, Catholic Schools Committee, Communications Committee where he was its first secretary, and the Ecumenical Committee). He represented the Catholic Assembly in the fourth general assembly of the Middle East Council for Churches in Cyprus. He supported the idea of the Catholic Church joining this Council as a member. He is a founding member of the Union of Christian Minorities in Lebanon. He is fluent in several languages: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English and German. He founded the publishing house “Babylon Publications Center” in the Chaldean Eparchy of Beirut, from which several books have been published so far, in addition to a Chaldean-Arabic dictionary and a book for learning the Chaldean language grammar. He authored several articles on religion, philosophy and history published in various magazines and languages such as in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish.
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