The Chaldean Catholic Church: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

East Syriac liturgy, Roman communion, Baghdad address.

The largest Christian body in Iraq: East Syriac in rite, in full communion with Rome since a line of patriarchs beginning with Yohannan Sulaqa in 1552, and led from Baghdad. It prays the Qurbana of Addai and Mari, keeps the Fast of the Ninevites, and has lost most of its people to war and emigration since 2003.

DeitiesOne God in three persons; Chalcedonian christology held with an East Syriac vocabulary and liturgy.

Founded1552 CE · Mosul and Rome

FounderYohannan Sulaqa, elected 1552 and confirmed at Rome in 1553

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment; purgatory as taught in the Catholic communion.

TextsThe Peshitta · The Qurbana of Addai and Mari · The Hudra

The map

The Chaldean Catholic Church’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1552 CE The Chaldean Catholic Church 1596 CE The Eastern Catholic Churches

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

Communion with Rome, without becoming Latin. The Chaldean Church holds Catholic doctrine and papal primacy and keeps the East Syriac rite: the Qurbana of Addai and Mari, the Hudra, married parish clergy, and a liturgical Syriac older than Latin. Rome's repeated attempts to Latinise the rite were reversed in the twentieth century, and the reformed Chaldean liturgy of 2005 went further back rather than further west. Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Chaldean is a name that came with the union. Rome applied the term Chaldean to the East Syriac Catholics in the sixteenth century; the people it describes are the same people whose relatives in the other church are called Assyrian, speaking the same Neo-Aramaic. Whether Chaldean names a church or a nation is argued inside the church itself, sharply — Patriarch Sako put his own position in writing in 2018 and was contradicted by Chaldeans in Iraq and the diaspora. ⚖ contested within Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

M Mar Yohannan Sulaqa. A monk of Rabban Hormizd elected patriarch in 1552 by bishops who would not accept another hereditary succession, he walked to Rome, made his profession of faith and was consecrated by Julius III in 1553. He returned to Diyarbakir, was denounced to the Ottoman governor by the rival patriarch, imprisoned, and killed in January 1555. The church counts him a martyr and dates itself from him. Domain the union with Rome, and the price of itStanding the monk elected in 1552 and consecrated at Rome in 1553, imprisoned and killed in 1555; the line of Chaldean patriarchs starts with him Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

Ba'utha d-Ninwaye — the three days of Nineveh. Three days of strict fasting in the weeks before Lent, kept in memory of the city that repented at Jonah's preaching — the city whose ruins are across the river from Mosul. The Book of Jonah is read through, and in many families nothing is eaten before evening. Every East Syriac church keeps it: Chaldean, Assyrian, Ancient, Syro-Malabar. When Annual, three days in the weeks before LentWho The whole church, from about the age of reason Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Christianity — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Chaldean Catholic Church — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Chaldean Catholic Church shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, 20 July 2001 where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.