Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako Returns to Baghdad After Nine Months in Exile Amid Political Dispute

Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako returned to Baghdad this week at the invitation of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, ending nine months of self-imposed exile in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region. He arrived the day before he led his first mass in the capital on Friday, April 12, 2024, and a church filled with members of the country’s Christian minority welcomed him warmly.

Sako had left his Baghdad headquarters for Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, last July. He did so after Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid revoked a decree recognizing Sako’s position as patriarch of the Chaldeans, Iraq’s largest Christian denomination and one of the eastern rites of the Catholic Church. The president described the revocation as bureaucratic housekeeping that did not diminish the patriarch’s legal or religious status. Sako called it an affront to the church and said he would not return to Baghdad until his recognition was reinstated.

The departure deepened a sense of helplessness among many Iraqi Christians, who often feel politically sidelined. Christian communities were targeted with violence first by al-Qaida and later by the Islamic State militant group. A 2021 visit by Pope Francis offered a brief glimmer of hope that quickly faded, and many Christian villages destroyed during the Islamic State’s rampage remain in ruins, with their former residents scattered. The number of Christians in Iraq is now estimated at 150,000, compared with 1.5 million in 2003, in a country of more than 40 million people.

At the time of his departure, Sako blamed a campaign against him by Rayan al-Kildani, a fellow Chaldean Christian who heads the Babylon Movement political party. Al-Kildani also founded the Babylon Brigades, a militia that fought against the Islamic State and still patrols much of the Nineveh plains. The militia is affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces, a collection of primarily Shiite, Iran-backed militias. Sako accused al-Kildani of seeking to take over Christian endowments and properties. Al-Kildani denied this and made similar allegations against Sako.

Sako said Friday that al-Sudani had formally invited him to return. He thanked the prime minister for the overture and for his “intention to solve the problem in an appropriate manner and restore dignity to the Chaldean Church.” He said God had given him “strength and wisdom all through this difficult period.”

Sako said Iraqi Christians “do not accept being a source of tensions.” Rather, “Christians, who have become a numerical minority, should be a source of light, love and comprehensive brotherhood, as taught by Jesus Christ,” he said, a call to live as neighbors across differences (Psalm 133:1).

Sako said he would first return to Irbil to settle some logistical matters before moving back to Baghdad permanently.

In a statement, al-Sudani’s office said that during a meeting with Sako upon his return on Thursday, the prime minister had stressed “the importance of his presence and role,” and the government’s “keenness to consolidate the principle of coexistence and brotherhood across the spectrum of Iraqi society.”

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