page_title: Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Kirkuk-Sulaimaniya
section_title: Yohannan Hormizd and the Chaldeans of Kirkuk
hierarchical_section_title: Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Kirkuk-Sulaimaniya / Yohannan Hormizd and the Chaldeans of Kirkuk
caption_attribution_description: English: Chad Hill, Ancient citadel in Kirkuk, Iraq العربية: قلعة كركوك
context_page_description: The Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Kirkuk is an archeparchy of the Chaldean Catholic Church in communion with the Pope in Rome. The archeparchy was created in the early years of the nineteenth century. Its present ordinary, Archbishop Yousif Thomas Mirkis, was consecrated in 2014.
context_section_description: The Assyrian community of Kirkuk was still a Church of the East in sympathy in the first half of the eighteenth century. The Carmelite missionary Father Benedict visited Kirkuk on 20 May 1743, where he found 'a large number of Nestorians very ignorant of religion'.  Speaking of the efforts of Catholic missionaries in the district, he said that 'there are many difficulties at Kirkuk, and few results'.
  The foundation of the Chaldean Catholic diocese of Kirkuk has been attributed to Yohannan VIII Hormizd, who was recognised by the Vatican as patriarchal administrator of the patriarchate of Babylon in 1780 and, after five decades of disputes and confrontations, as patriarch in 1830.  According to the Chaldean Catholic priest Joseph Tfinkdji, Yohannan Hormizd visited the town of Kirkuk in 1789 while travelling from Mosul to Baghdad, and converted its Church of the East community to Catholicism.  He is said to have consecrated a Chaldean metropolitan for Kirkuk, Mar Abraham, who resided in ʿAïnqawa during his reign, and died between 1821 and 1824.   The source for this assertion is not clear.  Abraham is not mentioned by any other source, and as Yohannan Hormizd himself (then considered by the Vatican to be merely metropolitan of Mosul) is styled 'metropolitan of Kirkuk' in a colophon of 1798, the Kirkuk region would seem to have been part of the diocese of Mosul at this period.
  Whether or not Yohannan Hormizd was able to consecrate a metropolitan for Kirkuk, the sympathies of the town's Assyrian Catholics were clearly of some significance during the power struggle between the patriarchal administrator and his opponents in the Chaldean Church and the Vatican.  In 1795 the Vatican's representative Padre Fulgenzio appears to have tried to persuade the Chaldean Catholics of Kirkuk to withdraw their allegiance from Yohannan Hormizd.  According to Yohannan Hormizd's own account, quoted by Badger:
  Padre Fulgenzio, however, departed and went to Selook, which is Kerkook, and created divisions among the Meshihayé there, and he did the same at Ainkâwa.  Moreover he wrote letters to other villages which began in this style:  I, Padre Fulgenzio, superior of the Patriarchs of the East, &c.
caption: The citadel of Kirkuk
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