VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Appealing to the international community to help bring peace to Syria and Iraq, Pope Francis and Catholicos Gewargis III, patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, also paid homage to the lands’ persecuted Christians, who demonstrate that faith in Christ is a bond that is stronger than any denominational difference.
“Just as the blood of Christ, shed out of love, brought reconciliation and unity and caused the Church to flourish, so the blood of these martyrs of our time, members of various churches but united by their shared suffering, is the seed of Christian unity,” said a joint declaration signed Nov. 9 by the pope and the patriarch in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel of the Apostolic Palace after praying together, particularly for persecuted Christians and for those who have felt forced to flee the Middle East.
The patriarch, who is based in Irbil, Iraq, leads a church of about 400,000 members with parishes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, North America, Australia and India. The Assyrian Church of the East, which is closely related to the Chaldean Catholic Church, is engaged in a variety of ecumenical dialogues, but it is not in full communion with any other church.
In 1994, then-Catholicos Dinkha IV and St. John Paul II signed a common Christological agreement, which expressed the two churches’ common faith in Christ’s incarnation. In 2017, the Catholic-Assyrian Church of the East dialogue commission issued a joint statement on the sacraments, including holy orders and the Eucharist.
“We are most grateful for the fruits of this dialogue of love and truth, which confirm that a diversity of customs and disciplines is in no way an obstacle to unity, and that certain differences in theological expressions are often complementary rather than conflicting.”
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