Chaldean Catholics () (), also known as Chaldeans (, Kaldāyē), Chaldo-Assyrians or Assyro-Chaldeans, are ethnic Assyrian adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which originates from the historic Church of the East.
Other Christian denominations present in Assyrian demographics include the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East (both of which also originate from the historic Church of the East and are modernly significantly less numerous than the Chaldean Catholic Church), the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Syriac Catholic Church.
The Chaldean Catholic community was formed in Upper Mesopotamia in the 16th and 17th centuries, arising from groups of the Church of the East who, after the schism of 1552, entered communion with the Holy See (the Catholic Church). Chaldean Catholics, indigenous to northern Mesopotamia, modernly divided between Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, have since migrated to Western countries including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Sweden and Germany. Chaldean Catholics and Assyrians in general also live in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Iran, Turkey, and Georgia. The most recent reasons for migration are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, poor economic conditions during the sanctions against Iraq, and poor security conditions after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Identity and names
Followers of the Chaldean Catholic Church often identify and are identified as "Chaldean" but, like adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Catholic Church, Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East who also live in or originate from Upper Mesopotamia, they call themselves Suraye in their own language. When their community entered communion with Rome, the Catholic Church called them, as before, Chaldeans, prohibiting the use for them of the description "Nestorians", reserving the latter term for followers of the Church of the East who were not in communion. The name "Chaldean" applied to both branches, and is still in use for the Chaldean Syrian Church in India, which is in union with the Assyrian Church of the East.
In 1908, before the Assyrian genocide, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states in the Middle East such as Iraq, an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia states: “Strictly, the name of Chaldeans is no longer correct; in Chaldea proper, apart from Baghdad, there are now very few adherents of this rite, most of the Chaldean population being found in the cities of Kirkuk, Erbil, and Mosul, in the heart of the Tigris valley, in the valley of the Zab, and in the mountains of Kurdistan. It is in the former ecclesiastical province of Ator (Assyria) that are now found the most flourishing of the Catholic Chaldean communities. The native population accepts the name of Atoraya-Kaldaya (Assyro-Chaldeans), while in the neo-Syriac vernacular Christians generally are known as Syrians." The consequent upheaval produced both an exodus, in particular but not only from what is now Turkey, to other countries and, within Iraq, a mainly urbanized Chaldean Church.
Kurdish organizations often wrongfully refer to local Christians as Kurdish Christians. Some Assyrians in northern Iraq supported Kurdish military and political activities in order to "advance the cause of Assyrian nationalism" and "sought to control the discourse on nomenclature among the Christian communities utilising 'Assyrian' as a suitable title for all Christians so that the supposed link to the Assyrian people of the ancient world could be maintained and give credence to their agitation for an independent state". The Assyrian Democratic Movement proposed to refer to the Christian population as "Chaldo-Assyrian", a political appellation from which the Chaldean Catholic Church soon withdrew support.
Raphael I Bidawid, patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church from 1989 to 2003 was quoted, after his death, in issue 55/3 (Fall 2003) of the Assyrian Star, as having said: "I personally think that these different names serve to add confusion. The original name of our Church was the ‘Church of the East’ … When a portion of the Church of the East became Catholic in the 17th Century, the name given was ‘Chaldean’ based on the Magi kings who were believed by some to have come from what once had been the land of the Chaldean, to Bethlehem. The name ‘Chaldean’ does not represent an ethnicity, just a church… We have to separate what is ethnicity and what is religion… I myself, my sect is Chaldean, but ethnically, I am Assyrian."