TUKI, RAFÄEL. — Coptic bishop of Arsinoe, man of letters and liturgist, born in Girga (Upper Egypt) into a heterodox Coptic family in 1701, died in Rome on 16 October 1787.
At the age of nineteen, while a deacon, he abjured heresy into the hands of Fr. Claudio Sicard, S.J. The Franciscans of the Apostolic Prefecture of Upper Egypt sent him in 1724 to the Collegio Urbano of Propaganda Fide in Rome, where he earned a doctorate in theology on 27 May 1735. Ordained a priest on 5 June of the same year, he was immediately commissioned by the Congregation of Propaganda to prepare the edition of the Euchologium, containing the three anaphoras of the Coptic Alexandrian rite (Rome 1736). Returning to Egypt in May 1737, he devoted himself to the apostolate for the adherence of the Coptic patriarch Giovanni XVII to the Roman Church. Summoned to Rome by the Congregation in 1739, he was professor of the Coptic language at the Collegio Urbano for more than 40 years. The fruits of his teaching include: Rudimenta linguae coptae sive negyptiacae ad usum Collegii Urbani de Propaganda Fide (Rome 1778). He devoted himself to the monumental edition of the liturgical books of the Church
At the Vatican Library he devoted himself to copying Arabic and Coptic manuscripts and codices. He prepared a revision and correction of the “Coptic Synaxarion,” still unpublished, as well as an Arabic translation of the Roman Martyrology (1763). He translated into Arabic the commentaries of St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and the Lord’s Prayer. He was appointed titular bishop of Arsinoe in 1761.