Julius Yeshu Çiçek was the son of the Syriac Orthodox priest Barsaumo (1908 - 1993) and his wife Bath Qyomo Sayde († 1991). At age nine, he went to the seminary of Deyr-ul-Za'faran, where he studied Syriac, Turkish, Arabic and theology. After 1958 he was ordained as a deacon and secretary of the later metropolitan Mor Philoxenos Yuhanon Dolabani. Later, he entered the monastery of Mor Cyriacus in the region Bsheriye ("Bitlis") and became involved in the search of surviving Syriac and Armenian Christians after the 1915 genocide.