Vatican Cardinal Installs Patriarch Paul III Nona in Baghdad, Iraq

Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, presided over the installation of Patriarch Paul III Nona of the Chaldean Catholic Church at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Baghdad. The Vatican delegation was led by Gugerotti, who is the Dean of the Eastern Church Department, and he carried the blessing and prayers of the Pope to the new Patriarch.

In his address, Gugerotti told the gathering that the Chaldean Church has a history of witness and testimony. He asked the Patriarch to guard the church’s tradition and its service to believers, and he encouraged the wounded and displaced Christians of the Middle East to live a new spring of faith, love and the proclamation of the Gospel. He described the ceremony as more than a formal event, calling it a living sign of the continued presence of a long-rooted Christian community and a message of solidarity from the wider Church.

Gugerotti said that the Church’s earliest fathers, moved by the Gospel alone and without political influence, carried the faith to distant lands, including India and China. He said this presence was respected by non-Christian kingdoms for the learning of its scholars, the scriptures of its believers, and the intellectual and philosophical achievements of its ancient administrations and educational centres. He added that this knowledge later reached Europe and the West (Deuteronomy 32:7).

The cardinal also addressed the recent past. He referred to the legacy of “witness and trust in blood” that, he said, had marked Chaldean history until recently. He paid tribute to clergy and faithful who were forced to emigrate because of instability in the Middle East, noting that in their new countries they became messengers of the faith and were admired for adapting fully to their new settings while keeping their spiritual and liturgical roots.

In a personal address to Patriarch Paul III Nona, Gugerotti quoted the Holy Spirit as giving the new Patriarch a great legacy, one that he said had often been preserved through hardship because of the fragility of the general situation in the country and the region. He outlined what he called a spiritual and pastoral plan for the coming period, placing the Patriarch and the Chaldean Synod before spiritual challenges ahead of administrative or political concerns.

Gugerotti concluded by telling the Patriarch that the Pope was awaiting him in Rome for a joint celebration of the Church. He said the Holy See would remain a close bond with the Chaldean Church as it carried out a mission that reaches beyond its geographical limits.

Source: Read the original report (translated from Arabic)