At deadline, Chaldean bishops not planning apology

A rift among Chaldean Catholic bishops is at a crucial juncture

Five bishops will not offer an apology to the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, despite a looming threat of canonical sanctions.

Bishops meet in Baghdad during a July 2024 synod of the Chaldean Catholic Church. Credit: Patriarchate of Baghdad.

Patriarch Cardinal Louis Sako directed the five bishops last week to apologize to him for acts of perceived disunity in the Eastern Catholic Church, setting a deadline of Sept. 5. 

But according to sources close to the dispute, the five bishops have no plans to apologize, and Sako could soon move to suspend them — with or without Vatican support.

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Division in the Chaldean Catholic Church made headlines outside Iraq last week, after Cardinal Sako issued an Aug. 28 statement criticizing five Chaldean bishops for skipping a July episcopal synod of the Eastern Catholic, which bishops are ordinarily required by canon law to attend. 

The statement lamented that in addition to skipping the synod, the bishops had not attended an August spiritual retreat, and had decided to withdraw their students from a Chaldean seminary, “which constitutes a serious breach” of ecclesial unity, Sako’s statement said.

The Aug. 28 text said that if they did not “apologize and make amends” by Sept. 5, Sako would ask Pope Francis to canonically sanction the five bishops, mentioning specifically the prospect of excommunicating them. 

Sources close to the Archdiocese of Erbil said the five bishops have no plans to issue an apology.

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Sako’s Aug. 28 letter focused on Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, whom Sako called the “godfather” of the Babylon Movement, an Iraqi political party in a long-running and high-profile dispute with Sako, which culminated in a 2023 government decision to revoke a decree that recognized Sako as the legitimate leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq.

After the decree was revoked, Sako spent some nine months in a kind of self-imposed exile in the the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The cardinal now insists that Warda failed to defend him and the Church during that period. 

The patriarch says that Warda should have condemned the revocation of the decree, and the figure behind it — Iran-backed Iraqi militia leader and strongman Rayan al-Kildani, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. State Department for human rights violations, and who has styled himself in Iraq as a kind of protector of Christians. 

According to Sako, al-Kildani has tried to sideline him in order to seize control of Church properties, and the property of Christians, in Iraq.

Sako has argued that in several media interviews, in both Iraq and in the West, Warda seemed to downplay the significance of the decree’s revocation, which Sako frames as an attack on his leadership of the Chaldean Church.

Some Iraqi Catholic suggest that Archbishop Warda has been unwilling to criticize al-Kildani because of the strongman’s influence in the Nineveh Plain region of Iraq.

But sources close to the Erbil archdiocese have told The Pillar that Sako’s narrative is not accurate — that the patriarch has been personally in a long-running power struggle with al-Kildani for political influence in Iraq, and has unfairly put the Church in the center of that dispute — doing so even without diplomatic support from the Vatican. 

While Sako has painted Warda as a Kildani sympathizer, sources close to the Erbil archdiocese have a different take, saying the archbishop is focused on trying to avoid Sako’s political fight, especially amid the fracturing reality of a country in which ISIS remains a threat, especially for Christians — with ISIS attacks in Iraq and Syria reportedly set to double this year.

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The conflict between the bishops is complex, with some Chaldean Catholic sources telling The Pillar that while Sako is respected because he holds the office of patriarch, his reportedly liberalizing theological and liturgical tendencies, along with an autocratic style, have alienated many figures in the Chaldean Church, even apart from the conflict with al-Kildani.

And some Chaldean leaders who say that Sako is right to push back against al-Kildani’s influence also say that the patriarch has conflated that issue with other governance concerns in the Chaldean Church. 

Sources also say that Sako has had difficult relations with Pope Francis in recent years, with the two men reportedly clashing during the pontiff’s 2021 visit to Iraq, over scheduling, logistics, and the pontiff’s itinerary.

Amid issues among the Chaldean episcopate is also the question of Sako’s eventual retirement. The cardinal — who turned 75 last summer — had previously said he would retire from the office of patriarch at that age. But Sako has since seemed to withdraw from that plan, with some speculating that he is reluctant to hand over the reins of leadership to any of the bishops with whom he has been in disagreement.

Tension over those issues, sources say, contributed to division over Sako’s self-imposed exile. And some bishops say that while Sako engaged in a political dispute in Iraq, he refused for several years to conduct a synod — a deliberative gathering of the Chaldean Church’s bishops — at which issues in the Church could be addressed, and policies addressed.

When Sako finally did call for a synod in July, five bishops — Warda the most prominent — notified both the Chaldean episcopate and the Vatican that they would not attend, arguing that Sako would not actually be open to addressing the issues facing the Chaldean Church.

Sako apparently found that unacceptable — and soon thereafter issued his threat of penalty. It is not clear whether the Vatican’s Dicastery for Eastern Catholic Churches backed that move, or whether Sako consulted Rome before issuing his Aug. 28 missive.

But the warning does raise canonical — and practical — questions. 

Sako has not specified exactly what delict, or canonical crime, the five bishops are alleged to have committed, instead attaching a number of penal canons to his Aug. 28 statement. 

Sources close to the Archdiocese of Erbil argue that the cardinal seems not to have followed the required canonical procedural steps, including canonical warnings, if he believes the bishops are close to committing a delict, or if he believes they are committing one currently.

And Sako’s suggestion that the Vatican would be involved in imposing a penalty suggests that he might not have much support among the rest of the Chaldean Church’s bishops.

The Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches allows for patriarchs, like Sako, to issue penal precepts to bishops, with serious canonical penalties attached — but only with consent of the episcopal synod. That Sako said imposing a penalty will involve the Vatican could indicate that the synod of bishops declined to authorize Sako to make that move.

Still, it is not clear that Sako will actually approach the Vatican if the bishops do not apologize Sept. 5. 

Sources close to Baghdad patriarchate say they expect Sako to attempt on his own a kind of canonical suspension for the five bishops soon after Sept. 5 — though the validity of that move would almost certainly be challenged in Rome, and not likely be upheld. 

But Sako seems determined to resolve things in the Chaldean Church according to his judgment. 

In a Sept. 2 statement, the cardinal said he was praying daily for the “difficult circumstances” of the Chaldean Catholic Church. 

“I hope that the solution will be achieved in truth, justice and honesty , with a frank and public apology, and a return to the bosom of the mother Church without legal penalties, dismissal from service, suspension, etc. or another scandal,” Sako wrote.

Still he lamented his sense of Warda’s involvement in al-Kildani’s political movement. 

“It is unfortunate that certain political parties have succeeded in winning over some clergy and mobilizing them for certain purposes against their Church. A network of interests, tricks, and accusations,” the cardinal argued on Monday. 

His statement also issued a warning, seemingly meant for the five bishops. “Whoever trusts himself and thinks that he will win the challenge and break the Church is delusional.”

The Chaldean Catholic Church is one of the 23 Eastern Catholic sui iuris churches in the Catholic communion. Headquartered in Baghdad, the church has more than 600,000 Catholics — but because of decades of violence and instability in the region, it is difficult to estimate how many live in Iraq, and how many live in diaspora, either in the United States, Europe, Australia, or across the Middle East.