On the eve of the journey that will lead to Rome the patriarch and the Chaldean bishops for their ad limina visit there were new clerical ordinations in Iraq.
In Baghdad Father Louis Shabi, ordained priest in Rome in 1968, was appointed as chorepiscop, while Father Saad Sirop Hanna, who many remember for being one of the Chaldean priest abducted in 2006, has taken the place of Msgr. Shabi as pastor of the Church of St. Joseph in Baghdad. The celebration was attended by the patriarch of the Chaldean church, Mar Emmanuel III Delly, the patriarchal vicars Msgr. Shelum Warduni and Msgr. Jacques Isaac, the Latin bishop of Baghdad, Msgr. Jean Sleiman and the Armenian Catholic bishop Msgr. Emmanuel Dabaghian.
In Ankawa there was the ordination of 6 subdeacons and three young deacons who in a couple of months will become priests: Steven Husam(1985), Karam Najib (1986) and Aram Sabah (1987). Coming from different dioceses they were ordained by Msgr. Rabban Al Qas, bishop of Amadhiya and episcopal administrator of Erbil who was assisted in the celebration by Father Bashar Warda, rector of the Chaldean Major Seminary in Ankawa and Father Sami Dinkha, parish priest of the Chaldean church in Essen (Germany), but temporarily in Ankawa as a teacher at the Babel College, the only Christian theological faculty in Iraq.