Patriarch grateful for fidelity of Iran’s Catholics
May 29, 2015
The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, has returned to Iraq from a 12-day visit to Iran.
The meetings with Chaldean Catholics in Iran “filled our hearts with joy and gratitude for your faith, steadfastness, hope, love, and for keeping your Christian values and traditions, including our Chaldean language,” Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako wrote in a May 27 pastoral letter.
“Remember that you are descendants of martyrs and saints,” he continued. “In the cathedral of Urmia there are the remains of 4,000 martyrs killed in 1918. They are a blessing and a force for you.”
Patriarch Sako added:
We invite you also to be attached to your country; you are Iranians and not a foreign community descended from another planet. You were there before the arrival of Islam, Christians were the majority, and your church was called the Church of Persia, and today you are a minority, but we felt that everyone is respecting you. Though you are a small community in number, you are as strong as the early Church. We are confident that you will grow.
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