Fr Ibrahim Luka
(1897–1950)
This is the mission of Sunday School to the Church: to bring up children, teenagers and youth to know God in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible. Therefore, Sunday School is performing Church’s most important task, upon which all her hopes are centred: preparing an upright generation for her. This is a mission worthy of all encouragement, and of our prayers that God may bless it.
(Sunday School and Its Mission for the Church, 1947, p. 8)
Biography
Hegumen Ibrahim Luka (19 Jan 1897–1950) was an important supporter of the Sunday School movement. He was born in Esna (January 19, 1897) and attended high school in Giza at the Sa’idiyya High School. As a student, he attended and preached at religious meetings of the Society of the Friends of the Holy Bible, a Coptic revivalist movement, distinct from but parallel to the Sunday School movement, founded in 1908 by Basili Botros and carried on by Hafez (later Fr Marcus) Daoud. In 1915, rather than going to university as his family desired, Luka was urged by Archdeacon Habib Girgis to come to Cairo and study at the Theological School. This he did, graduating in 1918.[1]B. A. Ayad, “Father Ibrahim Luka”, Coptic Church Review 27.3/4 (1988): 113. During this time, he was part of a committee to found the Church of St Mark in Helipolis in Cairo. He was ordained a priest in 1923 to serve in Asyut, and was elevated to hegumen the following year. In 1925, Pope Kyrillos V appointed him to serve at St Mark’s, Heliopolis. By 1940, he had become (in the words of Daniel Fanous) “one of the most beloved and (and scholarly) priests of the period, later being appointed as vicar of the patriarchate.”[2]Fanous, A Silent Patriarch, 132.
Browse Texts on ACCOT
B. Further Reading
al-Khuli, Henry. “Hegumen Ibrahim Luka” [al-Īghūmānūs Ibrāhīm Lūqā], Sunday School Magazine 5, no. 1 (Jan 1951): 12–15.
Atalla, Wahib. “Hegumen Ibrahim Luka” [al-Qummuṣ Ibrāhīm Lūqā], Sunday School Magazine 6, no. 9 (Jan 1952): 10.
Ayad, B. A. “Review of The Struggle of a Priest: From the Library of Father Ibrahim Luka by Fayez Riad”, Coptic Church Review 9, no. 4 (1988): 115–118. (PDF)
Ayad, B. A. “Father Ibrahim Luka: His Deeds, Programs, Struggle for the Renaissance of the Coptic Church and the Christian Unity.” Coptic Church Review 27, nos 3/4 (Fall 2006): 113–118. (PDF)
Girgis, Habib. The Clerical College: Past and Present. 1893–1938 [al-Madrasa al-iklīrīkiyya al-Qibṭiyya al-Urthūdhuksiyya bayn al-māḍī wa-l-ḥāḍir. 1893–1938]. al-Sakakini: al-Matba‘a al-Tajariyya al-Haditha, 1938. (page 282).
Fanous, D. A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902–1971). Life and Legacy. Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2019 (132, 158, 204; listed in the index as Luka, Ibrahim, Hegumen).
Related:
Connections: Fr Marcus Daoud (1897–1986)