Raphael Sako: THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN IRAQ

Gudrun Harrer in conversation with Louis Raphael
Sako


THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN IRAQ


Since 2013 Cardinal Raphael Sako is the head of the Chaldean
Church in Iraq, one of the oldest religious communities of the
country. The Christians in Iraq suffered immensily during the
political upheavals of the last decades, according to estimates
their number decreased from more than one million in the
beginning of the 1990s to 150.000 today. Especially in the
Niniveh plans, their historic homeland, in 2014 they fell victim
to the advance of the “Islamic State”. Their return is difficult
and slow. Furthermore the Chaldean community is threatened by an
internal split: The so called “Babylon Brigades”, affiliated with
pro-Iranian Shiite militias, are politically supported in Baghdad
to attack the leadership of Patriarch Sako.


 Louis Raphael I Cardinal Sako is the
Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, the Head of the Chaldean
Catholic Church. He was previously Archbishop of Kirkuk.


Gudrun Harrer, Senior Editor, Der Standard;
Lecturer in Modern History and Politics of the Middle East at the
University of Vienna and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna


(ZOOM Talk, recorded on January 18, 2024)