First a bearded and turbaned crucifer in traditional Iraqi garb flanked by altar boys with candles. Then more candles. Then a dozen white-gowned young men with four-metre palm branches. Then dozens of women with white veils and white embroidered gowns. Then a phalanx of deacons with red stoles twirled around their necks. Then the cymbals. Then ecclesiastics from all the rites of the Catholic Church in Sydney.
And then, accompanied by unending applause, a rolling chorus of Alleluias, and piercing ululation, the serene and smiling man whom the faithful of the St Thomas the Apostle Chaldean & Assyrian Catholic Diocese of Australia and New Zealand had been waiting for – his Beatitude Mar Paulos III Nona, once their archbishop and now worldwide Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Chaldeans – Eastern rite Catholics whose heartland is the Nineveh Plains of northeastern Iraq – know how to put on a thumping good procession. At their cathedral in Bossley Park they pulled out the stops to welcome Mar Paulos, who had been their much-loved archbishop for 11 years.
Bossley Park is a Chaldean enclave with Iraqi families up and down Quarry Road. On 21 April the nave of their church, the aisles, the choir loft and sanctuary were packed.
Archbishop Amel Nona left Sydney for Rome to participate in the election of a successor to the Chaldean Patriarch and Archbishop of Baghdad, Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako. He was elected on 12 April.
Two days before, Pope Leo XIV had given the Chaldean bishops a job description for a new Patriarch.
“May His Beatitude be a man of the Beatitudes: not called to extraordinary gestures or to cause a stir, but to everyday holiness, made of honesty, mercy, and purity of heart,” he said.
“May the patriarch be an authentic and approachable guide to the people, not a striking and distant figure.”
From the reception Mar Paulos III received, he is that sort of patriarch.
“That’s why we’re all here,” Sanarea Naamo, of Mount Vernon, told The Catholic Weekly, “because he did an amazing job with our community. He knows every single person.”
Apart from opening new parishes and community facilities, Mar Paulos worked energetically to engage Chaldean youth. His efforts seem to have paid off, as the cathedral was full of enthusiastic young men and women.
“Before we didn’t have much youth in the church,” Sr Grace Dakak, a member of the Iraqi order Daughters of Mary Immaculate Conception, told The Catholic Weekly.
But Mar Paulos was behind six youth conventions in Sydney, Melbourne, and New Zealand which featured lots of fun, but also Eucharistic adoration, Masses and formation. “That’s what brought us to the church,” the young people told her.
The new patriarch will be leaving to take up residence in Baghdad soon. He is very familiar with Iraq.
Amel Shamon Nona was born in 1967 in Alqosh, a deeply Christian village in the north of Iraq. He was ordained as a priest in 1991.
He obtained a doctorate in theological anthropology in Rome in 2005. In 2010 he became Archbishop of Mosul. At the time he was the youngest Catholic archbishop in the world.
It was another frightening moment in Iraq’s tormented history.
His predecessor had been kidnapped and murdered. And in 2014, Archbishop Nona was forced into exile as the genocidal troops of ISIS entered the city.
Almost all Christians in Mosul were killed or forced to flee.
In 2015 he went to the other side of the world and to a very different culture as the Chaldean archbishop.
Several church leaders paid tribute to Mar Paulos.
Cardinal Bychok, the Ukrainian Catholic eeparch, said “the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Chaldean Catholic Church are in many ways sisters in sorrow and sisters in hope.”
“We are churches built on the weakness of martyrs, on the endurance of faithful and on the unshakable conviction that Christ is our life and our victory.”
Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP said it was a bittersweet moment.
“Your sister church of the Latins has benefited from the faithful presence and collaboration of your flock, and your brother Latin archbishop has counted you a very dear brother and friend.”
Speaking for Australia’s Eastern Rite bishops, Melkite Bishop Robert Rabbat underscored the challenges the new patriarch will face in leading a church of the diaspora, most of whose members live outside the Middle East.
“We know that your Beatitude has experienced firsthand the tragedy of exile and the forced separation from the Chaldean faithful who were forced to flee the city of Mosul,” he said.
“This bitter episode has undoubtedly helped shape your understanding of the realities of the contemporary Middle East. We hope that you advocate, not only for the Chaldean church, but also for other Christian communities across the region.”
The new patriarch responded by reflecting on the twists and turns of his own vocation.
“What matters to us is not a land defined by geography nor authority shaped by the world, but the living ground of faith itself,” he said.
“The challenges facing our church are indeed great, but our faith is greater and stronger.
“I ask you, first and foremost, to pray for our Chaldean Church throughout the world, and I humbly ask you also to remember me in your prayers, for I stand in great need of them as I begin this new chapter of living out my ‘yes’ in the life of the church as a father and as a shepherd.”
A great soccer fan, he is looking forward to returning to Iraq just after it qualified for the World Cup under Australian coach Graham Arnold.
“After the election,” he joked, “one of my brother bishops said, an Australian has worked very hard to make the Iraqi national team of soccer qualify for the World Cup and now we hope you will qualify our church to another level.”
All the people who spoke with The Catholic Weekly said that they will dearly miss their archbishop.
Perhaps Fairfield mayor Frank Carbone spoke for them all when he told Mar Paulos: “as patriarch, you will have the power or the ability, to determine who the next Chaldean Bishop will be here. We want a copy of you.”
