The Chaldean Church is a Catholic church, born in the 16th century, further to a schism that occurred within the Church of the East.  In 1552, several bishops, who had set up in northern Iraq[1], southern Turkey and northern Iran, contested the hereditary succession of the Catholicos of the Church of the East Shimun VIII. They elected in Mosul another Patriarch, Yohannan Sulaqa, abbot of Rabban Hormizd Monastery in Alqosh, who named himself Yohannan/John VIII and went to Rome to profess his Catholic faith. On 20th April 1553, Pope Julius III appointed him Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic church “whose creation was thus officialised.”[2]

Back in the Ottoman Empire, he set up his patriarchate in Diyarbakır (southeast of modern days Turkey), 400 kilometres northwest from the monastery of Rabban Hormizd. Fighting openly with his rival Shimun VIII, Yohannan Sulaqa was arrested, imprisoned and murdered in 1555.

The foundation of the Catholic Chaldean Church had been preceded a century earlier, in 1445, by a decree of union in Cyprus between Rome and some members of the Church of the East, that Pope Eugene IV already called “Chaldeans”.

Up until the 19th century, this schism was all the more conflictual as a large number of worshippers from the Church of the East chose to remain in communion with Rome.

The Catholic Chaldean Church’s see was transferred from Diyarbakır to Mosul in 1830, before the Metropolitan Yohannan VIII Hormizd was elected as Patriarch.

Though they undisputedly counted as the majority among the estimated 1,200,000 Christians in Iraq before the first Gulf war in 1991, the Chaldeans number 750,000 in the last census in 1987, compared to 300,000 Assyrians (Church of the East and former Church of East). The total number of Christian people in Iraq amounted then to 8% of the total population. How many were there in 2018? The data collected by Mesopotamia’s correspondents confirms the demographic collapse reported by the communities visited. There are less than 400,000 Chaldeans in Iraq, living in Baghdad, Kurdistan, the Nineveh plain and Basra. The disasters faced by the Christian communities in Iraq have not ceased since its independence in 1933. There was no respite at the start of the 21st century with the American invasion in 2003 and the terrible sanctions imposed by the UN, along with the violence and persecution perpetrated by Islamicist and organised crime groups, targeting Christian communities since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Today, the Chaldean church is composed of a large diaspora spread across five continents: the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the former USSR, in particular in Russia (Moscow, Rostov-on-Don), Ukraine, Georgia (Tbilissi), Armenia (Yerevan).

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[1] In the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire and Persia.

[2] In “Histoire de l’Église de l’Orient”, Raymond le Coz, Éditions du Cerf, 1995, p. 328

The Mar Gorgis Chaldean Church in Baghdad was inaugurated on 7th December 1969. Originally, this plot of land only contained a small house, at a short distance from where the current church stands. The Chaldean church then bought the estate on which the Mar Gorgis church was built.

At this time, Mar Gorgis was one of the largest churches in Baghdad. It is still today considered to be the most dynamic Chaldean churches in Baghdad, with numerous religious, educational festive, social, cultural and sports activities.     

The Mar Gorgis Chaldean Church in Baghdad is located on a closed estate. Viewed from the exterior, the building is made of earthenware bricks and reinforced concrete, forming a reverse arch with a radiating apse chapel enclosed by a supporting wall. Four side doors and a main door aligned with the nave can be used to access the church. All the windows are decorated with stained glass. There is a stained-glass rose window on the facade of the building in the axis of the sanctuary, on the same level as the tribune.

The Mar Gorgis Chaldean Church in Baghdad is a single nave church with no central pillars, mounted with a semi-circular barrel vault. The very slightly raised sanctuary is entirely open, with no door or choir screen, mounted with a large pointed polyfoil arch in a relatively modern style, the pillars of which are embellished with paintings of Christ (to the right) and the Virgin and Child (to the left). The choir is ornately decorated. The altar frontal is adorned with a mosaic and mixed materials: wood, stone, ceramics, paint and gold leaf. The pulpits are similarly decorated. The one to the left is inscribed with the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic. The one on the right is inscribed with the Hail Mary. The semi-dome apse, covered in stone facing and containing two niches, is mounted with a dome with clerestory and stained-glassed windows.

An oil painting of Saint Georges the martyr by the artist Wissam Murkos is recessed into the north wall. Symmetrically, another work showing the baptism of Christ is recessed into the south wall.

Next to the church is a large community hall. Built by Father Francis, it was inaugurated at the end of 1984.

Next to the church was the Al-Fares private school. Seized by the State, it was returned to the Chaldean church after the fall of the Ba’athist regime in 2003. It is a private, mixed primary school known as the Virgin Mary school.