History of The Syriac Catholic Church

The Syriac Catholic Church

Denomination·Founded 1782 CE·est. ~200,000 worldwide, with the Iraqi and Syrian communities much reduced since 2003 and 2011 and a growing diaspora in Sweden, the United States and Canada.

History & overview · every faith gets one

The West Syriac rite, in communion with Rome, out of Mosul and Aleppo.

The Syriac church in full communion with Rome, with a patriarch of Antioch resident in Beirut. It prays the Anaphora of Saint James in Syriac like the Syriac Orthodox church it came out of, it was hollowed out by the Sayfo of 1915, and its Baghdad cathedral was the site of the 2010 massacre of Our Lady of Deliverance.

The founding

A Catholic party inside the Syriac Orthodox church produced patriarchs intermittently from 1662. In 1782 the newly elected patriarch Michael Jarweh declared himself Catholic, was driven out, and re-founded the line at the monastery of Sharfeh in Lebanon. The see was at Mardin, then Aleppo, and has been in Beirut since 1926.

Its founding is bound to Michael Jarweh, who declared union with Rome in 1782 — 1782 CE.

What it holds

Reality. The Syriac account of creation, held in the Catholic communion..

The divine. One God in three persons; Chalcedonian christology in the West Syriac liturgy..

Death and after. Resurrection and judgment; Catholic teaching, with the Syriac commemorations of the dead..

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 Syriac Catholic Church — 1782 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 Syriac Catholic Church — inherit everything, change what you must