Chaldean Catholic patriarch reflects on 1st year in office
March 11, 2014
The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church-- an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See-- has issued a message on the first anniversary of his election.
“I feel more the heaviness of the inheritance and the responsibility on my shoulders,” said Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako.
“My job doesn't look easy as imagined by some people,” he added. “Our country [Iraq] still lacks peace and stability, and our people still suffer and impoverish and emigrate, and our Church still in many places has problems and is stumbling: a shortage of priests, monks and nuns, and a lack of competencies and satisfactions, and weakness in our pastoral work, slow in the process of updating and renovation.”
“On this occasion, as we’ve started the season of Lent, I can only invite the Chaldean clergy everywhere … to introspection in solitude, prayer and listening to the Word of God, and deepen our calling and our mission,” he added, as he called upon clergy to “imitate Christ’s humility and the emptiness of Himself in order for Him to radiate in us, so our parishioners would feel the warmth of our affection and our service.”
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