Chaldean Catholic Church appoints new patriarch

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Chaldean Catholic Church has appointed Archbishop Emil Nona, formerly head of the Sydney diocese, as its new patriarch under the title Mar Paulus III, the patriarchate announced Sunday.

The Chaldean Patriarchate said in a statement that Nona “chose for himself Mar Paul Nona III” as his patriarchal name.

The appointment follows the departure of Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the former Chaldean patriarch in Iraq and the world, who officially announced his resignation in mid-March after 13 years of service. Sako, who had initially considered stepping down upon turning 75 two years earlier, said Pope Leo had accepted his resignation.

On Friday, the synod of Chaldean Catholic bishops met with Pope Leo at the Vatican to elect the patriarch.

Born in the historically Christian town of Alqosh in 1967, Nona was appointed Archbishop of Mosul in 2009 at the age of 42.

He was displaced alongside tens of thousands of Christians during the Islamic State (ISIS) takeover of the region in 2014, when the group seized control of the Christian-majority Nineveh Plains and declared Mosul as its capital. Following his displacement, he relocated in 2015 to lead the Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Sydney, serving the diaspora as archbishop of Australia and New Zealand.

Sako congratulated him on his election, saying in a statement, “I offer Your Beatitude my sincerest congratulations and best wishes for a reign filled with achievements, progress, and joy.”

Iraq’s Christian community has been severely affected over the past two decades. Following the US-led invasion in 2003, sectarian violence prompted many from Iraq’s Christian denominations to flee, while attacks by ISIS in 2014 hit minority communities especially hard.

Lacking recent and reliable census data, fewer than 300,000 Christians remain in Iraq, down from more than 1.5 million in 2003, according to data provided by Erbil’s Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda to Rudaw in 2022.