Joseph IV (Chaldean Patriarch)

Mar Joseph IV Timotheus Lazar Hindi was the fourth incumbent of the Josephite line of Church of the East, a patriarchate in Full Communion with the pope mainly active in the areas of Amid and Mardin, thus being considered the Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church from 1757 to 1796.
==Life==
Lazar Hindi, born on 14 September 1726, educated by the Urban college in Rome, was elected patriarch afer the death, happened on 23 January 1757, of his predecessor Joseph III Timothy Maroge. He was consecrated bishop on 8 February 1757 by Yohannan Basil, bishop of Mardin (died 1758), who in turn was consecrated bishop in 1741 by Joseph III. Lazar Hindi was confirmed patriarch by the Clement XIII on 25 March 1759 and received the pallium on 9 April 1759. He took the name of Joseph (Youssef) IV.
From 1765 to 1768 he went to Rome for printing Chaldean liturgical books and Gospels.
Lazar Hindi coped with the main problem of his predecessors: the tax burdens imposed by the Turkish authorities on his his churches with any kind of pretexts. As his predecessor, in the 1770s he visited the European courts to raise founds but without results.
Back in Amid, dispirited, he resigned in August 1780, appointing as successor his nephew Augustine Hindi. The Holy See accepted the resignation in 1781 but objected the succession to his nephew. Informed of this, Lazar Hindi withdrew his resignation and remained in Amid.
In 1789 Lazar Hindi was imprisoned by the Turkish authorities for his debt of twenty thousand piastras. He escaped in 1790 and left for Rome.
When he arrived in Rome in March 1791, he found that the Vatican was not so interested in his little patriarchate, while was working on possible unions with both the patriarchate of Qochanis, whose patriarch Mar Shimun XV Maqdassi Mikhail in 1770 wrote to Rome to establish contacts, and mainly with the ancient patriarchate of Alqosh, contended by two cousins, one of which, Yohannan VIII Eliya Hormizd, considered himself a Catholic. In 1791 the Vatican had given the government of Amid, the main town of Lazar Hindi's patriarchate, to Yohannan Hormizd. Lazar Hindi vehemently excepted, and in 1793 succeeded to have his nephew Augustine returned to be the episcopal administrator of Amid, besides being patriarchal administrator.
Lazar Hindi died in Italy in 1796.
==Notes==
Category:Assyrian people
Category:Chaldean Catholic Patriarchs of Babylon
Category:1726 births
Category:1796 deaths
de:Joseph IV. (Chaldäisch-katholischer Patriarch)