Iraq’s feuding bishops

Why the Chaldean Catholic patriarch might sanction his bishops

The leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church has called for a public apology from five bishops who did not attend the Chaldean Church’s recently held synod of bishops.

Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, pictured during a June 2023 visit to London, England. © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk.

If the bishops do not apologize by September 5, Cardinal Louis Sako said this week, he is prepared to send a report to Pope Francis asking for canonical penalties, which could include excommunication.

The situation is complex, and points to a deepening rift among Chaldean Catholic bishops, which is exacerbated by Iraqi politics, but has been escalated, sources say, by the bravado of two accomplished bishops, neither of whom is likely to back down from a game of ecclesiastical chicken in Iraq.

As the situation intensifies, the Vatican will face pressure to choose sides, in a stand-off unlikely to have clear winners, or a clean resolution.

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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. 

In Iraq, the Chaldean Church’s patriarch has been embroiled for more than a year in a dispute with Iraq’s President Abdul Latif Rashid, and with Rayan al-Kildani, the leader of an Iranian-funded Babylon Brigades’ militia, and its political wing, an Iraqi political party called the Babylon Movement.

Al-Kildani, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government since 2019 for human rights violations, is an Iraqi power broker, and reportedly a Chaldean Christian, who has styled himself a representative and protector of the country’s Chaldean minority, and even of Iraqi Christians more broadly. He has a reputation in Iraq for political corruption, and sometimes violent treatment of political adversaries.

In April 2023, al-Kildani publicly accused Cardinal Sako, the Chaldean patriarch, of not standing with Christians during the 2014 ISIS terrorism of Iraq, and of corruption and political opportunism.

Sako had long been a critic of al-Kildani — who has been described by Iraqi observers as both a “thug” and a “war lord” — with Sako stating in 2017 that al-Kildani “does not represent Christians in any way. His unfortunate statements aim to create abhorrent sectarian strife.”

Last year, Sako accused al-Kildani of seizing the property of Christians in northern Iraq — and several countries jumped in to support the patriarch’s claims.

Things escalated, in a fight over political influence, leadership of the Church in Iraq, and even control of property owned by the Chaldean Church, with Sako accusing al-Kildani of corruption, and of using political ties to claim control over Chaldean properties, while al-Kildani took Sako to court in a slander suit. 

In July, with the dispute in full swing, Iraq's president revoked a decree which officially recognized Sako as head of the Chaldean Church in Iraq, and the rightful trustee of its property. 

The president claimed that the decree was revoked because it had no constitutional basis and should never have been issued — but Sako cried foul, accusing al-Kildani of using his political influence to outmuscle him, and to seize control of Church assets, by influencing the president’s office.

Patriarch Sako told The Pillar last year that “it is obvious that the militia group of Rayan Al-al-Kildani is pushing the president to [revoke the decree], aiming of intimidation against him, seizing the homes of Christians, and conspiring to take control of Church properties.”

“These politicians want to silence me and stop me from speaking up for human rights and dignity and to claim a state of citizenship, equality, and justice,” the cardinal added.

In protest of the situation, Sako moved from Baghdad to a self-imposed exile in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. This spring, he canceled major events and public festivities for Easter, in protest of the situation.

While Sako was out of Baghdad, al-Kildani seemed to taunt him — even arranging a brief, incidental meeting with Pope Francis last September — reportedly through the Iraqi embassy — and framing it in Iraq as a private personal audience.

A screenshot from a video shared by Rayanal-Kildani (@RyanAlchaldean) on the social media network twitter.com.

In April, Sako returned to Baghdad, at the invitation of the country’s prime minister. After more than another month, he would have a new decree recognizing his authority. Things seemed to be settling into a new normal.

But there was still unfinished business in the Chaldean Church. During Sako’s exile, the influential Archbishop of Erbil, Archbishop Bashar Warda, issued a statement which said that the revocation of the decree did not impact Sako’s status as patriarch, and that it would not “prejudice the religious or legal status” of Sako in Iraq.

Archbishop Bashar Warda. Credit: Archdiocese of Erbil.

Warda added that, despite the revocation of the decree, Sako continued to enjoy “the respect and appreciation of the presidency of the republic, as Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in Iraq and the world.”

In the West, most Catholics took that as a statement of support for Sako. But from his exile in Kurdistan, the patriarch saw it differently.

According to sources in the Chaldean Church, Sako pushed back on that, taking Warda’s statement as a whitewashing of a political move he believed was an egregious attack on his leadership of the Church, orchestrated by al-Kildani, who in Iraq is widely regarded as corrupt.

Sako, as the patriarchate’s statement said this week, had asked Warda “to issue a statement denouncing the withdrawal of the decree,” and Warda didn’t. 

As tensions developed, Sako pulled back from a plan he had previously announced to retire from his office as patriarch — Sako turned 75 in July 2023.

Warda is probably the most well-known Chaldean bishop in the West, and had a platform to speak on the issue. But while Sako wanted strong denunciations of the president’s move — and recognition of al-Kildani’s influence on what happened — Warda seemed to many Iraqis to downplay the issue.

In August 2023, Warda told EWTN News that the issue was “complicated,” but did not condemn al-Kildani or the presidential revocation, saying mostly that the president ought to have been more friendly toward Sako while revoking the decree.

Tension developed between Sako and Warda, who is an ambitious pastoral builder with big plans for his diocese, whom many Catholics have seen as front-runner to be the Chaldean Church’s next patriarch.

Many Iraqi Christians speculated that Warda was unwilling to criticize al-Kildani because his diocese had received al-Kildani’s assistance in building and pastoral projects, as well as security assistance and political protection. 

Even after Sako returned to Baghdad in the spring of 2024, Warda reportedly spoke to journalists positively about al-Kildani’s role in the country, seemingly driving further the wedge between the patriarch and the Erbil archbishop. Both Warda and Sako are reportedly hard-charging and confident men of stern determination, with neither likely to back down from the perception of a challenge. 

Eventually — after Sako had the new decree recognizing him legally as the Chaldean patriarch — he called a long-delayed deliberative synod of the Chaldean Church’s 26 bishops. The meeting took place last month. 

Five bishops did not attend, including Warda. Sources close to the dicastery say that Warda and the other bishops communicated to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Eastern Catholic Churches that they would not be attending, reportedly saying that they believed the meeting would not be productive because Sako would not be receptive to what they had to say about the state of the patriarchate, and also raising concern that Sako had been living outside of his diocese for nine months, a violation of the canonical residency requirement for diocesan bishops.

Some sources also say that while there are legitimate issues between the bishops, Sako and Warda have also been embroiled in a kind of escalating fraternal rivalry, with Sako regarding Warda as angling politically for influence in the Chaldean Church. That perception is reportedly what’s left Sako saying he is unlikely to retire from his office, while division foments among the bishops.

On Tuesday this week, the tensions escalated, with a statement from the patriarchate calling Warda a “godfather” of al-Kildani’s political party, and stating that unless the five bishops apologize to the patriarch by Sept. 5, they could face canonical penalties, including even the possibility of excommunication.

The patriarchate’s statement accused the bishops of attacking both Sako and the Church. It also noted that the bishops have withdrawn their seminarians from the local seminary, which has been taken as a sign of disloyalty. 

According to the statement, any penalty conferred on the bishops would have to be confirmed by Pope Francis. 

Led by Warda, it is not likely the five bishops will back down, even with the patriarch’s gauntlet now thrown. 

But it is not clear whether Sako consulted with the Dicastery for Eastern Churches before issuing his statement this week. Some observers have suggested that Sako’s threat of penalties — demanding that the bishops apologize or else face ecclesiastical consequences — is an overreach of his authority. 

So the question is whether Rome will back him up.

If the Vatican doesn’t back Sako up — siding with Warda and the bishops alongside him — many of the other Chaldean bishops will likely push back, out of loyalty to their patriarch, and a dispositional allergy toward the appearance of Vatican overreach into their own ecclesial affairs. 

Further, if the Vatican doesn’t back Sako up, it might traditionally be thought to cause ecumenical problems for the Vatican, as Orthodox patriarchs tend to pull away from engagement with Rome when they perceive that Eastern Catholic Churches are being overly managed by the pope and his curia.

On the other hand, Warda has friends and supporters in Rome likely lobbying for him, and sources close to the dicastery say that the Syriac Catholic Patriarch in Iraq, Patriarch ​​Ignatius Joseph III Yonan, has himself been supportive of Warda’s approach. And many of the Orthodox bishops in Iraq are also reportedly supported by al-Kildani, leaving it unclear how they would respond if Rome backed Sako.

The Holy See is unlikely to try untangling that mess. 

First, the Dicastery for Eastern Catholic Churches has been mired in its efforts to untangle a liturgical dispute in the Syro-Malabar Church for more than a year, and by many accounts, has succeeded only in escalating the problem. 

Further, the Vatican is unlikely to try picking sides in a dispute in which the substance of the conflict is entangled with a long-brewing personality clash between Sako and Warda. Third, even apart from that personality clash, the Holy See has little hope of meaningfully deciding who is right — and while it might be inclined to reflexively back up a patriarch, it might also wish to see Sako retire without the conflict defining decisions over his succession.

In that context, September 5 is likely to come and go with no apology, and no penalty issued. But the Vatican’s best approach might be to see whether time will calm hot tempers and flared nerves, and whether grace might intervene to see the bishops themselves reach some kind of normalcy.  

In the meantime, both sides are likely to lob rhetorical grenades, and accuse another of disloyalty, disobedience, or disrespect. New penalty threats might be issued, and will likely be ignored. 

Still, observers tell The Pillar that the conflict won’t likely foment into schism without a catalyst to intensify it. Any wrong move for the Vatican could be that catalyst. In a desert stand-off like that, the most successful strategy for Pope Francis and his curia are likely to try a different strategy: out-waiting Iraq’s feuding bishops.