After Eight Months: Cardinal Sako Returns to Baghdad

The head of the Chaldean Church in Iraq, Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphaël Sako, announced on 10th April that he had returned to his headquarters in Baghdad.

He left Baghdad in August 2023 after President Abdul Latif Rashid, a Sunni Kurd, withdrew state recognition of Mgr. Sako as head of the church and spent eight months in exile in Erbil, Kurdistan.

Mgr. Sako returned at the personal invitation of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, a Shia Muslim from Baghdad.

The patriarch praised the invitation as "a first step in a journey of a thousand miles". Sako remains troubled by the Iraqi president's actions and continues to seek the recognition he has been deprived of.

Picture: Louis Raphaël Sako © Mazur CC BY-NC-ND, #newsHwkmrzmlsg