Chaldean patriarch gives ultimatum to absent clerics

Priests, monks hiding in the West must report back to superiors today, or risk suspension.

Chaldean clergy in Baghdad

Italy:  Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako has laid down an ultimatum for Chaldean priests and monks who have absconded recently to Western countries without the consent of their superiors.

Sako has named today as the deadline for all absent Chaldean priests and monks in the West to speak to their bishops and heads of their communities about when and how they will return to base, or about their potential transferal to other dioceses and communities.

Failure to do so will result in their suspension from the priesthood and they will no longer be remunerated. The canonical measures announced last month by the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon will be made official in an ad hoc decree approved by the permanent Synod of the Chaldean Church.

The whole affair brings to light one of the most determining but less well known factors that is contributing to the extinction of thousand-year-old communities with age-old traditions in the Middle East.

The apparent withering away of Christianity in ancient Mesopotamia is not only down to the Islamic State’s cut-throat jihadists, but also to disappearance of priests and monks. They are the first to flee their birthplaces to “seek shelter” in the West and comfortably settle down as members of the flourishing diaspora communities.

Sako has sent out numerous messages denouncing priests and monks who left their dioceses in the Middle East without permission. He branded these escapes as outright clerical desertion and even went as far as to publish a list of example “cases” on the Patriarchate’s website, revealing the names and surnames of the errant clerics in question.

Dozens of priests and monks who were named and shamed by the Patriarch seized training sessions and trips abroad as an opportunity to request asylum in the US, Canada, Switzerland and Australia, never to return. Some have even lied about threats from Islamic extremists.

The Primate of the Chaldean Church recalled that monks and priests have chosen to serve God and their brothers with their own lives. For this reason, they have “no justification for using the difficulties and uncertainties” of the situation in Iraq as an excuse to shirk their pastoral responsibilities and commitments linked to their vocation, when so many of their confreres “stay put in Iraq, consoling and supporting faithful” during this terrible time.

Source: Vatican Insider