Born in Khosrova, Persia, an ethnic Assyrian, he was born into a Chaldean Catholic family, and enrolled as a pupil at the French Lazarist School in Khosrova in 1846.
He was educated in Paris at the Lazarist seminary, and left for the United States in 1828 where he completed his studies for the priesthood at The Barrens in Perryville, Missouri.
Due to the German invasion, they were again moved in 1914, this time to the Lazarist seminary in Dax.