At the end of September, Coptic Solidarity, a nonprofit dedicated to helping the world’s minorities published a public statement signed by 86 nonprofit organizations, former legislators, and myriad individual experts urging a reinstatement of Patriarch Sako as head of the Chaldean Church.
Read MoreA small delegation of community members met in New York with the Prime Minister of Iraq, Mohammed Shi’a Alsudani, to discuss the current acrimony going on between the central government and the Chaldean Patriarch. The group also addressed the plight of Christians in Iraq with a special focus on a self-managed administrative unit in the Nineveh Plain and the recent alcohol ban inside Iraq which disproportionately hurts Christian and Yezidi businesspeople.
Read MoreSince 2014, confiscating and seizing of property has become increasingly prevalent in Iraq, with thousands of homes and properties being sold without their owners’ knowledge. Armed militias have undertaken these land-grabs, seizing property in Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, the Nineveh Province, and Kurdistan Region, supported by Islamist parties that have been at the helm of power since 2003, in coordination with several public land registry officials.
Read MoreIt was mid-July when Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid revoked a decree that gave state recognition to His Beatitude Mar Louis Raphaël Sako, the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church. The decree had given recognition to the patriarch’s appointment by the Holy See as head of the Chaldean Church “in Iraq and the world” and thus, “responsible for the assets of the Church.” Why did Rashid do that, and what does it mean for Iraq’s dwindling Christian population?
Read More