Chaldean Catholic Church

The Chaldean Catholic Church (Syriac: ܥܕܬܐ ܟܠܕܝܬܐ ܩܬܘܠܝܩܝܬܐ‎, ʿītha kaldetha qāthuliqetha), (Arabic: الكنيسة الكلدانية al-Kanīsa al-kaldāniyya) is an Eastern Syriac particular church of the Catholic Church, under the Holy See of the Catholicos-Patriarch of Babylon, maintaining full communion with the Bishop of Rome and the rest of the Catholic Church. The Chaldean Catholic Church presently comprises an estimated 500,000 people in northern Iraq, and adjacent areas in southeast Turkey and northwest Iran. There is a vigorous and often heated discussion about the ethnicity and ethnic self-identification of Chaldean Catholics.

History

The history of the Chaldean Church is the history of the Church of the East founded between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD in Assyria (Persian ruled Assuristan) — represented today by at least eleven different churches, (then ruled by the successive Parthian and Sassanid Empires, where it was known by derivative names for Assyria; Athura and Assuristan) — between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. The region of Assyria was also the birthplace of the Syriac language and Syriac script, both of which remain important within all strands of Syriac Christianity. The terms Syriac and Syrian originally being Indo-Anatolian derivatives of Assyrian.