ASIA/IRAQ - The Assyrian Patriarch to the Chaldean Patriarch: Let us create a joint Committee for Dialogue

Tuesday, 8 October 2013

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) - The Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Dinkha IV has responded positively to the idea of dialogue recently proposed by Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, regarding the creation of a "Joint Committee" as a tool to tackle together the difficulties shared by the two sister Churches. "We are very happy", writes the Head of the Assyrian Church Patriarch Sako in a letter sent to Fides Agency "regarding your good will to renew the dialogue with us aiming for unity. We also agree and support you in this good aim to be close to each other as brothers in Christ and the sons and daughters of one nation.
This - emphasizes Mar Dinkha IV - was the intent of the Assyrian Church of the East in the past and nowadays, and so it will be in the future".
Mar Dinkha’s letter is dated October 3 and responds to the congratulatory message sent by His Beatitude Sako to the Assyrian Patriarch on 15 September, on the occasion of his 78th birthday.
The Assyrian Patriarch - who since 1984 resides in Morton Grove, near Chicago - invokes divine protection on the sons and daughters of the Chaldean Church "from the storms that shake the Middle East".
In 1994, the dialogue between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Catholic Church as a whole led to the signing of a joint Common Christological Declaration, with which Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV acknowledged that they share the same faith in Jesus Christ and the Mystery of Incarnation. So far an ecumenical and bilateral ecclesiological dialogue between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, that share the same theological, liturgical and spiritual heritage, has never officially begun. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 08/10/2013)


Share: