ASIA/IRAQ - Elections, the Chaldean Patriarch: the Church cannot be "silenced" when it contributes to the common good

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) - The Church does not intervene directly in the field of politics. But it cannot be silenced when it intervenes on crucial issues and emergencies for the life of the people and the Country. This was strongly highlighted by Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako who responded to those who in recent days had accused him of wrongly intervening on political issues, in the heated climate that precedes the upcoming legislative elections on Saturday 12 May. In a message released by official channels of the Patriarchate, Patriarch Sako reaffirmed the right of the men of the Church to intervene in matters affecting the life of the community, exercising a positive role "to support national cohesion, to protect the rights and freedoms of the person", to favor the establishment of an authentic rule of law, of the principle of citizenship.
In recent days, the Chaldean Patriarch had publicly stated that many of the small political groups animated by Christian leaders and militants who will take part in the next elections are actually influenced by far more influential Kurdish or Shiite political groups. Some local members of the small lists of Christians had reacted negatively to the Patriarch’s statements, seen as an undue clerical interference in temporal matters. The Patriarch, in his message, points out that such criticisms attack the sensitivity and social concern that the Church has always shown for the concrete life of peoples and nations. (GV) Agenzia Fides, 8/5/2018)

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oriental churches

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politics

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geopolitics

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elections

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social doctrine

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