The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom reports that, according to the Iraqi Christian Foundation, an agency of the Chaldean Catholic Church, approximately 80% of Iraqi Christians are of that church.^[6] In its own 2018 Report on Religious Freedom, the United States Department of State put the Chaldean Catholics at approximately 67% of the Christians in Iraq.^[7] The 2019 Country Guidance on Iraq of the European Union Agency for Asylum gives the same information as the United States Department of State.^[8]

The description "Chaldean"[edit]

For many centuries, from at least the time of Jerome (c. 347 – 420),^[14] the term "Chaldean" was a misnomer that indicated the Biblical Aramaic language^[15] and was still the normal name in the nineteenth century.^[16]^[17]^[18] Only in 1445 did it begin to be used to mean Aramaic speakers in communion with the Catholic Church, on the basis of a decree of the Council of Florence,^[19] which accepted the profession of faith that Timothy, metropolitan of the Aramaic speakers in Cyprus, made in Aramaic, and which decreed that "nobody shall in future dare to call [...] Chaldeans, Nestorians".^[20]^[21]^[22]

Previously, when there were as yet no Catholic Aramaic speakers of Mesopotamian origin, the term "Chaldean" was applied with explicit reference to their "Nestorian" religion. Thus Jacques de Vitry wrote of them in 1220/1 that "they denied that Mary was the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed in two persons. They consecrated leavened bread and used the 'Chaldean' (Syriac) language".^[23] The decree of the Council of Florence was directed against use of "Chaldean" to signify "non-Catholic."

Outside of Catholic Church usage, the term "Chaldean" continued to apply to all associated with the Church of the East tradition, whether they were in communion with Rome or not. It indicated not race or nationality, but only language or religion. Throughout the 19th century, it continued to be used of East Syriac Christians, whether "Nestorian" or Catholic,^[24]^[25]^[26]^[27]^[28] and this usage continued into the 20th century.^[29] In 1852 George Percy Badger distinguished those whom he called Chaldeans from those whom he called Nestorians, but by religion alone, never by language, race or nationality.^[30]

Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid of the Chaldean Catholic Church (1989–2003), who accepted the term Assyrian as descriptive of his nationality and ethnicity, commented: "When a portion of the Church of the East became Catholic in the 17th Century, the name given to the church was 'Chaldean' based on the Magi kings who were believed by some to have come from what once had been the land of the Chaldean, to Bethlehem. The name 'Chaldean' does not represent an ethnicity, just a church [...] We have to separate what is ethnicity and what is religion [...] I myself, my sect is Chaldean, but ethnically, I am Assyrian."^[31] Earlier, he said: "Before I became a priest I was an Assyrian, before I became a bishop I was an Assyrian, I am an Assyrian today, tomorrow, forever, and I am proud of it."^[32]

Patriarchate of

Baghdad

Metropolitan Archdioceses of , Kirkuk, Tehran, Urmya

Baghdad

Archdioceses of , Basra, Diyarbakir, Erbil, Mosul

Ahwaz

Eparchies of , Alquoch, Amadiya, Akre, Beirut, Cairo, San Diego, Detroit, Toronto, Sydney, ~~Salmas~~,^[85] Sulaimaniya, Zaku

Aleppo

Territories dependent on the Patriarch: , Jordan

Jerusalem

Ecumenical relations[edit]

The Church's relations with its fellow Assyrians in the Assyrian Church of the East have improved in recent years. In 1994, Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Dinkha IV of the Assyrian Church of the East signed a Common Christological Declaration.^[88] On the 20 July 2001, the Holy See issued a document, in agreement with the Assyrian Church of the East, named Guidelines for admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, which confirmed also the validity of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari.^[89]

In 2015, while the patriarchate of the Assyrian Church of the East was vacant following the death of Dinkha IV, the Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako proposed unifying the three modern patriarchates into a re-established Church of the East with a single Patriarch in full communion with the Pope.^[90]^[91] The Assyrian Church of the East respectfully declined this proposal citing "ecclesiological divergences still remaining"^[92] and proceeded with its election of a new patriarch.

Chaldean Catholic Church