By BaghdadhopeThe confrontation between the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East in the US continues.
On May 9 the Chaldean Catholic Diocese of St. Peter the Apostle of San Diego, California, announced that it had officially accepted the request of some priests and faithful of the Assyrian Church of the East for the “fullness of communion with the Catholic Church and living union with the Chaldean Church by their entrance into the Chaldean Catholic Dioceses." In the following days during various sacred ceremonies this union was publicly stigmatized by the proceeding, side by side, of Mgr. Sarhad Y. Jammo, Chaldean bishop of the Diocese and Mar Bawai Soro, the Assyrian bishop who in recent years led the movement tending to the union with the Catholic Church and the consequent recognition of the Pope of Rome.
Only ten days after that proclamation the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Dinkha IV, received at the headquarters of his diocese in Chicago, along with Mar Gewarges Sliwa, bishop of Baghdad, the bishop of the Roman Catholic Church of Chicago Mgr. Francis Eugene George, with whom, according to the website Ankawa.com - the only one to report the piece of news and the photos - talked about the situation of Christians in Iraq.
It’s hard to believe that the meeting between the two prelates did not at least touch on the topic of Mar Bawai. It’s easier to think that this announcement, given through a site that has thousands of readers among Iraqi Christians at home and in the world, but of which there is no mention on sites directly linked to the Assyrian Church of the East or on that of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, represents a response to the events in San Diego.
A sort of public witness of the strength of the Assyrian Church of the East that despite the loss of a bishop, priests and faithful passed through the union with the Chaldean church to that with the Catholic Church, still maintains excellent relations with it.