What is Chaldo?
1.
Shorter way of saying
If somebody says, "I'm a Chaldo".
2.
The Chaldos are adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church and are a subset of the Assyrian people.
Today in the middle east, the group identifies itself as Sūrāyā in singular and Sūrāyē in plural which is considered to be a synonym of Aššūrāye (Assyrians.) However, the group mistakenly translates the word Suraye as Christians.
They have been settling primarily in Iraq, with smaller communities in Turkey and Iran, for the most part speaking the Chaldean Neo-Aramaic language. A formerly Nestorian denomination, they were reunited with the Roman Catholic Church in 1553 Chaldean Catholic Church was established, its first patriarch was proclaimed patriarch of "Mosul and Athur" (Nineveh and Assyria) on Feb. 20, 1553 by Pope Julius III.
Chaldean Catholics have no direct or absolute lineage with the Neo-Babylonian Empire "Chaldeans", but were designated with the name Chaldean in the 16th century when they reunited with the Catholic Church to distinguish from the adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East.
Mar Raphael I Bidawid, a patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church: “I personally think that these different names serve to add confusion. The original name of our Church was the ‘Church of the East’ ... When a portion of the Church of the East became Catholic, the name given was ‘Chaldean’ based on the Magi kings who came from the land of the Chaldean, to Bethlehem. The name ‘Chaldean’ does not represent an ethnicity... We have to separate what is ethnicity and what is religion... I myself, my sect is Chaldean, but ethnically, I am Assyrian.”
Mar Raphael I Bidawid: “Before I became a priest I was an Assyrian, before I became a bishop I was an Assyrian, I am an Assyrian today, tomorrow, forever, and I am proud of it.”
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