The Patriarch of Babylon, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, said he was “disappointed by the position of the Holy See” and that it had failed to support him in recent months.
The patriarch has been embroiled in a legal struggle in Iraq since July, when the President Abdul Latif Rashid rescinded his “institutional recognition” as head of the Chaldean Catholic Church – the country’s largest Christian denomination.
In an interview with Asia News last week, Sako complained that the Vatican “has not intervened to disavow the actions of the president of the republic, to reject the attacks on the person of the patriarch, to distance itself from those who call themselves Christian leaders”.
He was referring to Rayan al-Kaldani, a militia leader with whom he has publicly clashed, who circulated a video on social media on 7 September which implied that he had been received by Pope Francis in Rome.
Kaldani heads the nominally-Christian “Babylon Brigades”, an Iranian-backed militia which Sako accuses of seizing Christians’ property and parliamentary representation. In 2019, he was placed on a US sanctions list following evidence of him slicing a detainee’s ear.
In accounts of his visit to Rome, Kaldani claimed to have presented the Pope with a gift and received a blessed rosary in return.
The Vatican later clarified that al-Kaldani had been part of a group the Pope spoke to during his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square.
Sako said that al-Kaldani’s claims “came as a real shock to Christians and Muslims in Iraq, because he presented himself once again as the true representative of Christians”, warning that this created an atmosphere of instability in Iraq.
“The Holy See could have taken the floor, could have said that this gentleman's propaganda is not true, could have tried to calm the people, the many Christians and Muslims in Iraq who are suffering from these new attacks, from these lies that hurt our community first of all.”
Loading ...
