Chaldean Catholic Church in the context of "Iraqi Christians"

Christianity, which originated in the Middle East during the 1st century AD, is a significant minority religion within the region, characterized by the diversity of its beliefs and traditions, compared to Christianity in other parts of the Old World. Today, Christians make up approximately 5% of the Middle Eastern population, down from 13-20% in the early 20th century. Cyprus is the only Christian majority country in the Middle East, with Christians forming between 76% and 78% of the country's total population, most of them adhering to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Lebanon has the second highest proportion of Christians in the Middle East, around 40%, predominantly Maronites. After Lebanon, Egypt has the next largest proportion of Christians (predominantly Copts), at around 10% of its total population. Copts of Egypt, numbering around 10 million, constitute the single largest Christian community in the entire Middle East.

The Eastern Aramaic speaking Assyrians of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and parts of Iran have suffered due to ethnic cleansing, religious discrimination, and persecution for many centuries. During the 20th century, the percentage of Christians in the Middle East fell mainly as a result of the late Ottoman genocides: the Armenian genocide, Greek genocide, and Assyrian genocide committed against them by the Ottoman Turks and their allies, leading many to flee and congregate in areas in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, North America, and Western Europe. The great majority of Aramaic speaking Christians are followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Pentecostal Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church. In Iraq, the numbers of Christians has declined to between 300,000 and 500,000 (from 0.8 to 1.4 million before 2003 US invasion). Assyrian Christians were between 800,000 and 1.2 million before 2003. In 2014, the population of the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq was scattered to Dohuk, Erbil and Jordan due to ISIS forcing the Assyrian community out of their historical homeland, but since the defeat of the Islamic State in 2017, Christians have slowly began returning.

The Ancient Church of the East (ACE) is an Eastern Christian denomination. It branched from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1964, under the leadership of Mar Toma Darmo (d. 1969). It is one of three Assyrian Churches claiming continuity with the historical Church of the East, in addition to the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Since 1969, the see of the Ancient Church of the East is headquartered in Baghdad.

The Church of the East (Classical Syriac: ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ ʿĒḏtā d-Maḏenḥā) or the East Syriac Church, also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church, the Chaldean Church or the Nestorian Church, is one of three major branches of Eastern Nicene Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies in the 5th century and the 6th century, alongside that of Miaphysitism (which came to be known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches) and Chalcedonian Christianity (from which Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism would arise).

Having its origins in Mesopotamia during the time of the Parthian Empire, the Church of the East developed its own unique form of Christian theology and liturgy. During the early modern period, a series of schisms gave rise to rival patriarchates, sometimes two, sometimes three. In the latter half of the 20th century, the traditionalist patriarchate of the church underwent a split into two rival patriarchates, namely the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, which continue to follow the traditional theology and liturgy of the mother church. The Chaldean Catholic Church based in Iraq and the Syro-Malabar Church in India are two Eastern Catholic churches which also claim the heritage of the Church of the East.

The Words of Institution, also called the Words of Consecration, are words echoing those of Jesus himself at his Last Supper that, when consecrating bread and wine, Christian eucharistic liturgies include in a narrative of that event. Eucharistic scholars sometimes refer to them simply as the verba (Latin for "words").

Almost all existing ancient Christian churches explicitly include the Words of Institution in their eucharistic celebrations and consider them necessary for the validity of the sacrament. This is the practice of the Catholic Church's Latin liturgical rites and Eastern Catholic liturgies, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and all the Oriental Orthodox Churches, including the Armenian, the Coptic, the Ethiopian and the Malankara, as well as the Anglican Communion, Lutheran churches, Methodist churches, and Reformed churches. The only ancient eucharistic ritual still in use that does not explicitly contain the Words of Institution is the Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari, used for part of the year by the Church of the East denominations, namely Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East, and the Chaldean Syrian Church, due to their tradition of using the Holy Leaven. The Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syro-Malabar Church, two of the Eastern Catholic Churches, use the same Anaphora, but insert in it the Words of Institution. However, groups authorized by the Catholic Church to review the Qurbana recognized the validity of this eucharistic celebration in its original form, without explicit mention of the Words of Institution, saying that "the words of Eucharistic Institution are indeed present in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, not in a coherent narrative way and ad litteram, but rather in a dispersed euchological way, that is, integrated in successive prayers of thanksgiving, praise and intercession."

The Sayfo (Syriac: ܣܲܝܦܵܐ, lit. 'sword'), also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide, was the mass murder and deportation of Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during World War I.

The Assyrians were divided into mutually antagonistic churches, including the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Before World War I, they largely lived in mountainous and remote areas of the Ottoman Empire and Persia, some of which were effectively stateless. The Ottoman Empire's nineteenth-century centralization efforts led to increased violence and danger for the Assyrians.

Religion in Israel is manifested primarily in Judaism, the ethnic religion of the Jewish people. The State of Israel declares itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" and is the only country in the world with a Jewish-majority population (see Jewish state). Other faiths in the country include Islam (predominantly Sunni), Christianity (mostly Melkite and Orthodox) and the religion of the Druze people. Religion plays a central role in national and civil life, and almost all Israeli citizens are automatically registered as members of the state's 14 official religious communities, which exercise control over several matters of personal status, especially marriage. These recognized communities are Orthodox Judaism (administered by the Chief Rabbinate), Islam, the Druze faith, the Catholic Church (including the Latin Church, Armenian Catholic Church, Maronite Church, Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church, and Chaldean Catholic Church), Greek Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Armenian Apostolic Church, Anglicanism, and the Baháʼí Faith.

Assyrian Church may refer to:

• Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Christian church founded by and composed of ethnic Assyrians entered into communion with Rome
• Assyrian Church of the East, an Eastern Christian church
• Ancient Church of the East, an Eastern Christian denomination founded in 1968
• Syriac Orthodox Church, an Eastern Christian church
• Syriac Catholic Church, an Eastern Christian church
• Assyrian Evangelical Church, a Presbyterian church in the Middle East
• Assyrian Pentecostal Church, a Reformed Eastern Christian denomination
• Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Urmia, a Russian Orthodox mission to ethnic Assyrians

The Assyrian diaspora (Syriac: ܓܠܘܬܐ, Galuta, "exile") refers to ethnic Assyrians living in communities outside their ancestral homeland. The Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrians claim descent from the ancient Assyrians and are one of the few ancient Semitic ethnicities in the Near East who resisted Arabization, Turkification, Persianization and Islamization during and after the Muslim conquest of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The indigenous Assyrian homeland is within the borders of northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria, a region roughly corresponding with Assyria from the 25th century BC to the 7th century AD. Assyrians are predominantly Christians; most are members of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, the Assyrian Pentecostal Church and the Assyrian Evangelical Church. The terms "Syriac", "Chaldean" and "Chaldo-Assyrian" can be used to describe ethnic Assyrians by their religious affiliation, and indeed the terms "Syriac" and "Syrian" are much later derivatives of the original "Assyrian", and historically, geographically and ethnically originally meant Assyrian (see Name of Syria).

Assyrians in Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Süryanileri, Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܝܐ ܕܛܘܪܩܝܐ) or Turkish Assyrians are the indigenous Semitic-speaking ethnic group and an oppressed minority of Turkey, who are Eastern Aramaic–speaking Christians, with most being members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Pentecostal Church, Assyrian Evangelical Church, or Ancient Church of the East.

They share a common history and ethnic identity, rooted in shared linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, with Assyrians in Iraq, Assyrians in Iran and Assyrians in Syria, as well as with the Assyrian diaspora. Assyrians in such European countries as Sweden and Germany would usually be Turoyo-speakers or Western Assyrians, and tend to be originally from Turkey.