RELIGIOUS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq, threatened to head to the judiciary if Iraqi President Abdullatif Jamal Rashid did not withdraw his recent decision to cancel a special presidential decree accredited Sako a decade ago.
New Arab reported Rasheed, 79, a Kurd from the ruling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), recently issued republican decree number 31 by which he decided to withdraw republican decree number 147 for the year 2013, which is about the accreditation of Patriarch Sako in Iraq.
Republican decree number 31 was published in Iraq’s formal newspaper Al-Waqaei Al-Iraqiya, edition 4727, on 3 July; hence the decree has been officially put into practice.
On 7 July, Rashid clarified that he had decided to annul special presidential decree 147 for 2013, describing it as “illegal and unconstitutional”.
The decree was issued by Jalal Talabani, the former president of Iraq and former secretary general of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), who passed away in 2017.
Rashid also said that cancelling the presidential decree does not affect the legal and religious status of Sako as he has been appointed as the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq by the Vatican pope.
In an open letter to Rashid on Monday, Sako described the latter’s decision as an unprecedented “danger” against the Christian component in Iraq. He warned that if the president did not withdraw his decision, he would file a legal taunt against it.
Al-Kildani is subject to US Treasury sanctions related to his role as head of the 50th Brigade of the Popular Mobilization Forces, based in Iraq’s strategic Nineveh Plains region.
Sako was born in 1948 in Zakho town of the Kurdistan region in Northern Iraq. Sako was officially raised to a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Francis on 28 June 2018.