List of Chaldean Catholic Patriarchs of Babylon

Patriarch of Babylon redirects here. For earlier Catholicoi of the Assyrian Church of the East, see List of Patriarchs of the Church of the East. In particular and for legal line of accession prior to 1553, see List of Catholicoi of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Patriarchs of the East until 1552
Coat of arms of the Chaldean patriarchate.

This is a list of the Chaldean Catholicos-Patriarchs of Babylon, the leaders of the Chaldean Catholic Church and one of the Patriarchs of the east of the Catholic Church starting from 1553 following the Schism of 1552 which caused a break from the Assyrian Church and the subsequent founding of the Church of Assyria and Mosul, later called the Chaldean Catholic Church.

This list continues from the List of Patriarchs of the Church of the East that traces itself back from the Church founded in Assyria first mentioned in the 1st century under Simon Peter in 1 Peter 5:13 out of which grew the Church of the East. It was Catholicos Timothy I Al-Baghdadi incorporated the numerically dominant St. Thomas Christians under the Apostolic See of the Catholicos-Patriarch of Babylon, which is often wrongly attributed to St. Thomas as a result.

The term Chaldean Catholic Patriarchs of Babylon is somewhat inaccurate in a geographical and historical context, as the Church was an offshoot of the Assyrian Church, and founded by priests from Upper Mesopotamia, a region which had been Assyria, rather than in southern Mesopotamia where Babylonia and Chaldea had once been.

Catholicoi and Patriarchs of Babylon for the Chaldeans

The Shimun line

In 1553, Mar Yohannan Sulaqa, willing to separate from the Church of the East's Patriarchal See of Alqosh, an Assyrian town in the Assyrian homeland in northern Iraq, went to Rome asking for his appointment as Patriarch. He was consecrated in St. Peter's Basilica on 9 April 1553.

The Josephite line of Amid

The Catholic Patriarchs based in Amid, now Diyarbakır in southeastern Turkey, began with Joseph I who in 1681 separated from the Assyrian Patriarchal See of Alqosh entering into full communion with Rome.

At the death of Augustine Hindi, this See remained vacant until 1830 upon the merging of the Alqosh line in the person of Mar Yohannan Hormizd thus forming the modern Chaldean Catholic Church.

The Alqosh/Mosul line

The patriarchal See of Alqosh, also known during the 17th and 18th centuries as Eliya line, was the oldest and largest patriarchal See of the Assyrian Church of the East, the only one existing patriarchal line before the 1553 split, and traces itself back from St. Thomas in the 1st century. In 1610, Mar Eliyya VIII (1591–1617), Patriarch of the See of Alqosh, entered communion with the Catholic Church. Eliyya VIII, however died in 1617, and his successor quickly repudiated the union, returning to the Assyrian church.

In 1778, with the death of Eliya XII (or XI) Denkha, the See of Alqosh divided between Mar Eliyya XIII Isho-Yab, who was not in communion with Rome, and his cousin Mar Yohannan VIII Eliyya Hormizd, who professed to be Catholic. In 1804, with the death of Eliyya Isho-Yab, Yohannan Hormizd remained the only incumbent of this ancient See. He was recognized patriarch by Rome only in 1830, after the merging of the see of Amid, thus forming the modern Chaldean Catholic Church.

See also

External links

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