Early Life and Studies
Iwas was born on 21 April 1933 in Mosul, Iraq. He completed his elementary studies at the school of Our Lady's Parish and was transferred to St. Thomas Syriac Orthodox Church School, both in Mosul. In 1946, he began his theological studies in the city's Mor Ephrem seminary. At the seminary, his birth name was replaced by the name Zakka. There, in 1948, he was ordained as a deacon with the rank of Reader. In the year 1953, he was promoted to the rank of half-deacon. The following year saw Iwas take monastic vows. He left Mosul at that time to become secretary to the patriarchs, Afram Barsoum and then Ya`qub III. In 1955 he was promoted to the rank of deacon.
On 17 November 1957, Patriarch Ya`qub III ordained Iwas a priest and, two years later, gave him the pectoral cross as rabban. In 1960, Iwas pursued further study in New York. There, he studied oriental languages and completed a master's degree in English at City University and a further master's in pastoral theology at the General Theological Seminary.
Read more about this topic: Ignatius Zakka I Iwas
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or studies:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim—objects press around us, filling the mind with their magnitude and with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“You must train the children to their studies in a playful manner, and without any air of constraint, with the further object of discerning more readily the natural bent of their respective characters.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)