page_title: Chaldean Catholic Church
section_title: Later history of the Chaldean Church
hierarchical_section_title: Chaldean Catholic Church / History / Later history of the Chaldean Church
caption_attribution_description: English: Chaldean Catholic Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Ankawa near Erbil, Iraq.
context_page_description: The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic particular church in full communion with the Holy See and the rest of the Catholic Church, and is headed by the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon. Employing in its liturgy the East Syriac Rite in the Syriac language, it is part of Syriac Christianity. Headquartered in the Cathedral of Mary Mother of Sorrows, Baghdad, Iraq, since 1950, it is headed by the Catholicos-Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako. In 2010, it had a membership of 490,371, of whom 310,235 lived in the Middle East.
  The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, reports that, according to the Iraqi Christian Foundation, an agency of the Chaldean Catholic Church, approximately 80% of Iraqi Christians are of that Church. In its own 2018 Report on Religious Freedom, the U.S. Department of State put the Chaldean Catholics at approximately 67% of the Christians in Iraq. The 2019 Country Guidance on Iraq of the European Asylum Support Office gives the same information as the U.S. Department of State.
context_section_description: In 1838, the Kurds of Soran attacked the Rabban Hormizd Monastery and Alqosh, apparently thinking the villagers were Yazidis responsible for the murder of a Kurdish chieftain, and killed over 300 Chaldeans, including Gabriel Dambo, the refounder of the monastery, and other monks.
  In 1846, the Ottoman Empire, which had previously classified as Nestorians those who called themselves Chaldeans, granted them recognition as a distinct millet.
  The most famous patriarch of the Chaldean Church in the 19th century was Joseph VI Audo who is remembered also for his clashes with Pope Pius IX mainly about his attempts to extend the Chaldean jurisdiction over the Malabar Catholics. This was a period of expansion for the Chaldean Catholic Church.
  The activity of the Turkish army and their Kurdish and Arab allies, partly in response to armed support for Russia in the territory of the Qochanis patriarchate, brought ruin also to the Chaldean dioceses of Amid, Siirt and Gazarta and the metropolitans Addai Scher of Siirt and Philip Abraham of Gazarta were killed in 1915).
  In the 21st century, Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, the pastor of the Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul, who graduated from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome in 2003 with a licentiate in ecumenical theology, was killed on 3 June 2007 in Mosul alongside the subdeacons Basman Yousef Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed, after he celebrated mass. Ganni has since been declared a Servant of God.
  Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho and three companions were abducted on 29 February 2008, in Mosul, and murdered a few days later.
caption: Cathedral of Saint Joseph, Ankawa, Archeparchy of Arbil.
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