Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako has asked for UK support for a conference of Iraq’s religious and political leaders to discuss the country’s constitution.
The Patriarch of Babylon, who heads the Chaldean Catholic Church and has long advocated a secular constitution for Iraq, met parliamentarians and government representatives during his ten-day visit last month at the invitation of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
He also met Church leaders, including Cardinal Vincent Nichols, with whom he discussed the Chaldean diaspora, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who said he would visit Iraq in 2024.
During discussions with the FCDO, the patriarch requested its backing for a meeting between politicians and religious leaders from the UK and Iraq, to take place in Baghdad outside the “green zone”, the centre of the international presence in the city.
In an interview towards the end of his visit, the patriarch said that UK politicians and religious leaders should visit his country “to meet Iraqi politicians, religious leaders and the Iraqi people of all faiths, and find out what they really want, what they fear and what they hope for”.
The patriarch maintains that Iraq’s constitution, drawn up with the support of the US-led coalition which invaded the country in 2003, discriminates against Christians and other minorities in public life through its basis in Shiite Islam.
He said this denies “the right of full citizenship to all and a state of equality and justice”.
John Adam Fox, the chairman of Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East (FACE) who arranged the visit, said that the coalition drafted the constitution “fair and square on the basis of stats” in accordance with the large Shiite majority.
Mr Fox told The Tablet that a reformed constitution would reflect the “historic pluralism” of Iraq.
The patriarch said that Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion and as a former colonial power meant “the British must help us in changing our constitution”.
Alongside a conference in Baghdad, he also suggested the UK government invite Iraqi politicians and religious leaders “to show them how multi-faith communities in the UK co-exist under a secular constitution and secular legal system”.
The Dean of Westminster, David Hoyle, who hosted the patriarch to Evensong at Westminster Abbey, said that he would welcome any such delegation.
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