Berkley Center

Fr. Behnam Benoka is the founder of Mart-Shmoni charitable clinic and the Humanitarian Nineveh Relief Organization, which serves internal displaced people in the Ankawa suburb of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. Fr. Behnam is a professor at Babel College in Ankawa. He joined the Seminary of St. Peter in Baghdad in 1997 and was ordained into the priesthood in 2004. In 2012, he was assigned as administrator for St. Ephrem Seminary and dean of St. Ephrem College for the Syriac Catholic dioceses of Mosul, where he served until 2013. He has also served as vice rector at St. Peter Seminary for the Chaldean Patricate in Ankawa. Fr. Behnam earned a Ph.D in philosophy in 2012 from the Gregorian Pontifical University, a Ph.M. in 2009 from Santa Croce Pontifical University, and a B.A. in theology in 2004 from Urbaniana Pontifical University, all located in Rome.