Chaldean Catholic Church

Overview

The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic church rooted in the ancient Church of the East and in communion with Rome. Its historic center is Iraq, where it is the largest Christian denomination and a central institution of Christianity in the Middle East. Its patriarchate links present-day congregations to the Christian communities of Mesopotamia. The church also has a presence beyond Iraq, including in Syria, Jordan and Israel. Migration following war and persecution has made care for communities outside their ancestral towns an increasingly important part of its life.

Chaldean Catholics form a majority of Iraq’s remaining Christians. They share the country’s Christian history with the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church and other churches. These communities have distinct ecclesiastical identities, even where they share language, family ties, places of origin or experiences of displacement. Church membership therefore cannot be treated as a political mandate to speak for every Christian in Iraq. The distinction became especially consequential when an Iran-aligned militia led by a Chaldean Catholic sought influence in the Christian towns of the Nineveh Plains.

The church’s recent history cannot be separated from Iraq’s shrinking Christian population. Approximately 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, including a large Chaldean Catholic community. Violence, insecurity and emigration then devastated Christian life. Later estimates differ: one 2026 account placed the number of Christians below 150,000, while another put it at roughly 250,000. Both figures describe a steep decline, but they are separate estimates rather than a settled count. Churches, schools, homes and businesses depend on people able to live safely around them; the loss of those people has affected the church as deeply as damage to its buildings.

Origins

The Chaldean Catholic Church developed from the Church of the East, an ancient Christian tradition centered in Mesopotamia. Older descriptions sometimes call that tradition the Nestorian Church. The Chaldean church retained its eastern liturgical inheritance while entering communion with the pope in Rome. That history explains both parts of its identity: it belongs to the Catholic communion and remains a church formed by the languages, worship and communities of the eastern Christian world. Its connection to Iraq reaches far beyond the establishment of its Catholic patriarchate.

A division within the Church of the East in the sixteenth century led bishops to elect Yohannan Sulaqa as patriarch. Sulaqa traveled to Rome, where Pope Julius III recognized him as patriarch in 1553. His return to Mesopotamia established a patriarchal line in communion with Rome. The election and recognition did not create Christianity in the region; they marked a new ecclesiastical relationship within a much older tradition. Later generations maintained the Chaldean patriarchate through political changes in Mesopotamia and the wider Middle East. Its patriarch’s residence in Baghdad reflects Iraq’s enduring importance to the church.

Chaldean worship preserves Syriac as a liturgical language. Language has helped carry prayers and communal memory across changes in political rule and across borders. The church’s presence in Syria illustrates that its history extends beyond modern Iraq: a 1999 account identified it among Syria’s Eastern Catholic churches, and Syrian schools were permitted to teach Chaldean in some settings as a liturgical language. Communities in Jordan have likewise included Iraqis displaced from their homeland. In Israel, the Chaldean Catholic Church has long held recognition as a religious community, although its local membership has been small.

Doctrine

As an Eastern Catholic church, the Chaldean Catholic Church professes the Christian faith and recognizes communion with the pope. Its patriarch and bishops govern the church’s own ecclesiastical life, while its worship follows the East Syriac tradition inherited from the Church of the East. Communion with Rome does not erase that inheritance. The church’s identity is expressed through its liturgy, clergy, religious teaching and community institutions as well as through its relationship with the wider Catholic Church.

The Bible is central to its religious life. Worship, preaching and the celebration of Mass give congregations a common practice whether they live in Baghdad, the Nineveh Plains or abroad. Syriac liturgical usage also connects present congregations with earlier generations of Mesopotamian Christians. For families forced from their towns, the continuity of worship has carried particular weight: a restored church building becomes a living church when a congregation can gather in it, celebrate its feasts and sustain the next generation.

The church’s Catholic affiliation distinguishes it from the Assyrian Church of the East, even though both draw on the same broad eastern Christian past. It is also distinct from other Catholic churches of the region, including the Maronite Church. These distinctions matter in accounts of Iraq’s Christians. Figures for the country’s total Christian population include members of several churches; they are not counts of Chaldean Catholics alone. Likewise, events affecting a Christian town or monastery can involve more than one denomination, even when the Chaldean Catholic Church is a prominent voice in the response.

History

Modern Iraq long supported substantial Christian communities, with Chaldean Catholics forming its largest denomination. Their institutions were part of urban life and of the towns and villages of northern Iraq. Political upheaval after 2003, sectarian violence and repeated displacement eroded that presence. In September 2005, President Jalal Talabani met Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly to discuss Christian concerns about Iraq’s constitution. The meeting reflected the patriarchate’s role in speaking to state authorities about the conditions under which its members could remain in the country.

Violence also struck places of ordinary Christian life. Chaldean-owned businesses were among the targets of a riot in Zakho in December 2011. Such attacks compounded the loss of security already driving families from Iraq. By 2016, an estimate held that roughly 90 percent of the country’s prewar Christians had fled. Different accounts use different starting populations and methods, but the scale of departure transformed Iraq’s largest Christian denomination. Departure weakened congregations and reduced the families available to sustain schools, local businesses and community institutions.

The gravest assault came with the Islamic State’s seizure of Mosul in June 2014. The terrorist organization ordered Christians to convert, pay jizya, flee or die. Jizya was a tax imposed on Christians and Jews under Islamic rule as part of their subordinate dhimmi status. The Islamic State’s campaign emptied Mosul of its longstanding Christian population and extended across the Nineveh Plains, a historic center of Iraqi Christian life. Approximately 120,000 Christians were driven from the plains. Families lost access not only to houses but also to churches, jobs, farms and the local networks on which a return would depend.

The militants attacked Christian heritage as well as living communities. They destroyed Mosul’s 45 churches during their campaign and razed the Monastery of Saint Elijah, Iraq’s oldest monastery. The destruction made visible an effort to remove the institutions and landmarks through which Iraqi Christians had maintained a place in the country. In 2016, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared the Islamic State’s campaign against Iraq’s Christians a genocide. Erbil’s Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda warned in 2019 that Christianity in Iraq was perilously close to extinction.

The Islamic State’s defeat in Iraq in 2017 ended its territorial rule but did not restore the communities it had expelled. At the time of Pope Francis’s 2021 visit to Qaraqosh, only about half the town’s displaced Christian residents had returned. Some churches were repaired, and holiday Masses continued to draw worshippers in Erbil and Qaraqosh. Yet a service held in a restored building could not by itself recover lost homes, livelihoods or confidence in local security. Continued emigration and obstacles to return left the church facing a crisis long after the Islamic State had lost control of the area.

Political role

The patriarchate has often represented church concerns in public life without making the church a political party. Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, patriarch until 2026, addressed the security of Christian towns, the protection of church property and the ability of Christians to participate in Iraq’s institutions. Chaldean Catholics also expressed support for Iraq’s 2019 protests against the central government. These interventions arose from the church’s position within a population whose ability to remain in Iraq depended on public order, fair administration and protection from coercion.

Sako spent two years helping organize Pope Francis’s 2021 visit to Iraq. Before Francis met the Shiite religious leader Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, Sako sought a joint declaration defending human life. The visit brought attention to Christians and other Iraqis who had lived through invasion, civil conflict, terrorism and displacement. Francis’s visit to Qaraqosh also showed the limits of reconstruction: the town could welcome the pope while many of its former residents remained away.

Sako’s most sustained political confrontation concerned militia interference in the Nineveh Plains. Popular Mobilization Forces factions exercised power over checkpoints and local security after the Islamic State’s defeat. Militias also influenced reconstruction contracts and the Mosul–Erbil trade corridor. Control over roads and work affected whether displaced Christians could visit property, rebuild businesses and resume ordinary life. Reports of land seizures in Batnaya, Tel Keppe and Bakhdida described forged deeds, pressure on registries and squatting. Such practices made legal ownership and safe return difficult even after the immediate terrorist threat had receded.

Rayan al-Kildani, founder of the Babylon Brigades, is Chaldean Catholic. His religious identity does not make his militia a representative of the Chaldean Catholic Church or of Iraq’s Christians. The church distanced itself from him and rejected his claim to speak for the wider Christian community. The brigade consists mostly of Shiite fighters and draws much of its political support from Shiite voters. Iran-aligned Shiite factions backed al-Kildani, giving Iranian influence a nominally Christian vehicle in the Nineveh Plains. The brigade also used parliamentary seats reserved for Iraqi Christians to build pro-Iran political power.

Sako publicly clashed with the Babylon Brigades over their attempted expansion in Christian areas. Local opposition to the militia reflected concerns about intimidation, property, checkpoints and control of community institutions. The confrontation was therefore more than a dispute between two prominent figures: it concerned who could speak for displaced Christians and who would control the conditions of their return. A church leader’s authority over congregations and church assets was distinct from a militia commander’s armed and electoral power. Treating al-Kildani’s baptism as a mandate from Christians would obscure the church’s explicit rejection of his representation.

Relationship to Israel and the Jewish people

The Chaldean Catholic Church has a small but longstanding presence in Israel. It is recognized there as a religious community, and a nonresident patriarchal vicar has represented Chaldeans in Jerusalem since 1903. That presence connects the church’s Mesopotamian history to the wider history of Christian communities in the Land of Israel. The size of the local congregation differs greatly from the church’s historic presence in Iraq, but recognition gives its members an established communal place.

The church’s relationship with Rome also places it within a wider Catholic setting that includes the Holy See’s relations with Israel. The Holy See and Israel signed a Fundamental Agreement in December 1993, followed by full diplomatic relations. That agreement concerned the Holy See and Israel; it should not be mistaken for a separate political position adopted by the Chaldean patriarchate. For the church, the immediate concerns recorded in recent decades have centered on the survival of Iraqi Christian communities, access to worship and protection of their homes and institutions.

Present day

By 2026, the Chaldean Catholic Church remained Iraq’s largest Christian denomination, but it served a far smaller Iraqi Christian population than before 2003. One 2026 account estimated roughly 250,000 Christians in Iraq, most of them Chaldeans; another placed the total below 150,000. The estimates should be read separately. Both describe a church whose historic center has been weakened by decades of violence and emigration. Restored churches and crowded holiday Masses in Erbil and Qaraqosh demonstrate continuing religious life, while the partial return to Qaraqosh shows how much of the displaced community remained absent.

Cardinal Sako’s resignation as patriarch was announced on March 10, 2026. Chaldean bishops gathered in Rome to elect his successor and chose Archbishop Amel Nona on April 12. Nona took the patriarchal name Paul III and was to request ecclesiastical communion from the pope. The succession preserved the church’s patriarchal leadership after a period in which Sako had become a prominent defender of Iraqi Christians and an outspoken opponent of militia interference.

Patriarch Paul III called for unity among Iraqi Christians as their communities struggled to survive. The church’s prospects remain tied to conditions in the places from which its members fled: secure roads, reliable property records, livelihoods and freedom from armed pressure. The Islamic State’s defeat removed its territorial rule, but the continued displacement of families and militia influence in the Nineveh Plains left recovery unfinished. The Chaldean Catholic Church continues to worship and lead communities in Iraq and beyond it, carrying a Mesopotamian Christian tradition whose future depends on whether its people can sustain life in their historic homeland.