Chaldean Catholics

Last year His Eminence George William Cardinal Mundelein, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, sent a message to His Beatitude Joseph Emanuel Thomas II. Patriarch of Babylon, Shepherd of Eastern Roman Catholics who worship under the Chaldean Rite. Would His ' Beatitude please send a priest to Chicago to minister to 150 Chaldean Rite Catholic families, refugees from Assyria and Mesopotamia and the largest group of their countrymen in the U. S.? In Mosul, Iraq the white-bearded Patriarch assented, chose his black-bearded onetime Vicar General, Rev. Francis Thomay. That 51-year-old cleric shaved off his whiskers, removed his shiny black pillbox hat, arrived in Manhattan last August wearing the dark mufti of a priest. In Chicago last week Father Thomay was laying plans to build the first Chaldean Rite church in the U.S.

Although the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church is by far the largest, there are 18 others, each with distinctive customs and liturgies.* The background of the Chaldean Church winds back into earliest antiquity. The Chaldean Empire was the world's first, established after the Deluge by King Nemrud, grandson of Noah. A prophecy of Christ's coming was made by Daniel in Babylon, the Chaldean Empire's capital. When Wise Men Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar -- Chaldeans all -- returned from their expedition to Bethlehem, they became, according to tradition, the first group to spread the Gospel. The tongue in which the Chaldean Rite is still conducted is Chaldeo-Aramaic, which its adherents claim Christ spoke. One of the chief differences between the Chaldean Rite and the Latin Rite is that Chaldeans baptize by immersion.

Chaldean Francis Thomay was born in Constantinople, educated by Lazarists and Jesuits. From his youth he saw many another Christian butchered by the Turks. Ordained and stationed in Mosul during the War, Father Thomay was put in charge of 200,000 Christians deported by the Turks from Armenia, Anatolia, Mesopotamia because he was the only priest in Mosul who could speak Turkish. By the end of the War, privation had reduced his charges to 10,000. As a result of the massacres and starvation in the Near East, the Chaldean Catholic Church lost six archbishops, 150 priests, almost 100,000 of the faithful.

When Father Thomay arrived in Chicago last summer, his parishioners took turns hoarding him, gathered for Sunday worship in a North Side parochial school. Currently the plumpish, bespectacled priest lives at a Catholic hospital, celebrates mass in its chapel, depends for clothing and pocket money on the $2 or $3 his Chaldeans give in weekly collections. Not at all daunted, Father Thomay recently took an option on a site for a church, was busy last week with plans for a Byzantine structure to be called St. Ephrem's. Toward its cost, a series of lectures by Father Thomay and a Bazaar to be opened in April commemorating the silver anniversary of his ordination may help.

* Bound together in all matters of faith and by mutual recognition of the Pope as Christ's Vicar on Earth, they are: Ambrosian (Milan), Mozarabic (Spain), Chaldean, Malabar, Coptic, Abyssinian, Pure Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, Pure Greek, Italo-Greek, Georgian, Melkite, Bulgarian, Serbian, Rumanian, Russian, Ruthenian.

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