History of The Chaldean Catholic Church

The Chaldean Catholic Church

Denomination·Founded 1552 CE·est. ~600,000 worldwide; the Iraqi share has collapsed since 2003 and the diaspora in Michigan, California and Australia now holds much of the church.

History & overview · every faith gets one

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.

The founding

A disputed hereditary succession in the Church of the East led one party to elect the monk Yohannan Sulaqa, who travelled to Rome, professed the Catholic faith and was consecrated patriarch in 1553. He was imprisoned and killed in 1555. The union survived in fragments and was consolidated in 1830 as the Patriarchate of Babylon of the Chaldeans, with its see later fixed at Baghdad.

Its founding is bound to Yohannan Sulaqa, elected 1552 and confirmed at Rome in 1553 — 1552 CE.

What it holds

Reality. Created, fallen and redeemed, in the East Syriac telling..

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

Death and after. Resurrection and judgment; purgatory as taught in the Catholic communion..

The line

descent is public here — where it came from, what left it

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

Keep going

Back to the overview — the living page: elements, discussion, the web The Belief room — the claims themselves, with sources and context Branch The Chaldean Catholic Church — inherit everything, change what you must