Chaldean Catholic Church

Heritage

The Chaldean Catholic Church is heir to the ancient Church of the East, the church of Mesopotamia that once stretched missions to India and China. A portion of that church entered communion with Rome — a union usually dated from the election of Yohannan Sulaqa in 1552 — and became known as Chaldean. Its homeland is Iraq: Baghdad, Mosul, and the villages of the Nineveh Plain. Emigration, accelerated brutally by war after 2003 and the ISIS assault of 2014, has made metro Detroit the largest Chaldean community in the diaspora; US parishes are gathered under the Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle (based in Michigan) and the Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle (based in California).

Theological family

Fully Catholic doctrine in the East Syriac tradition, prayed in a liturgy descended from one of Christianity's oldest — the anaphora of Addai and Mari. In full communion with Rome; not an Orthodox church, and distinct from the Assyrian Church of the East, its non-Catholic sister.

Who decides what

A patriarchal church: the Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad and his synod, in communion with the pope; the two American eparchies have their own bishops.

What a first-time visitor would find

The Chaldean Mass in the East Syriac rite, chanted substantially in Sureth (modern Aramaic) and Arabic alongside English — an American visitor hears the Lord's Prayer in a language close to the one Jesus prayed it in. Parish life doubles as the cultural center of a refugee-shaped community.

What it has always cared about

Aramaic language and identity; the memory of Mesopotamian Christianity's vast ancient reach; martyrdom and displacement borne within living memory; and in Michigan and California, building an American future without letting Iraq's churches be forgotten.

Its gift to the wider church

A living remnant of the ancient Church of the East inside the Catholic communion — and, for American Christians, the nearest encounter with the church of Iraq, whose recent martyrs put flesh on the word persecution.

Commonly confused with

With the Assyrian Church of the East, which shares the East Syriac heritage but is not in communion with Rome; and with Orthodox churches generally — the Chaldean Church is Catholic, in full communion with Rome, and is not Orthodox.

Range of views inside it

Range in language (Sureth, Arabic, English) and in generational culture between refugees with fresh memory of Iraq and American-born Chaldeans.

Where Chaldean Catholic Church churches are on the map

4 Chaldean Catholic Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 3 states.

• Michigan — 2
• California — 1
• Illinois — 1