[3] Feeling called to serve as a priest, as a teenager he entered the minor seminary of the Coptic Church in Cairo, then did studies at a Jesuit secondary school in the city.
He then went to Rome, where he studied at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, earning doctorates in both theology and philosophy.
He then returned to Egypt where he taught at Coptic seminaries in the country, first at Tahta, then at Tanta.
Pope John Paul II granted him the ecclesiastica communio on 23 June 1986.
[4] Pope John Paul II named him a cardinal of the Catholic Church in 2001.