Dioceses of the Syrian Catholic Church

The Syrian Catholic Church (or Syriac Catholic Church), established in the second half of the 17th century as a Catholic offshoot of the Syrian Orthodox Church, had around a dozen dioceses in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. Three of these dioceses were ruined during the First World War in the Assyrian and Armenian massacres, and the 20th century also saw the growth of an important Syriac Catholic diaspora in America, Europe and Australasia. As of 2012^[update] the Syrian Catholic Church has fifteen dioceses, mostly in the Middle East, and four patriarchal vicariates for the diaspora communities.

During the 18th century the Syrian Catholic church established dioceses in the major cities of the Ottoman Empire with significant West Syrian communities, and also became the dominant West Syrian grouping in a number of villages in northern Iraq, gaining control of the monastery of Mar Behnam near Mosul.

At the beginning of the 19th century the Syrian Catholic Church had dioceses for Jerusalem, Aleppo, Damascus, Edessa, Amid, Mardin, Gazarta (from 1818), Mosul (from 1790) and the Monastery of Mar Behnam. In 1817 a diocese was created for Beirut, which persisted until 1898. In 1862 a separate diocese was created for Baghdad and Basra, hitherto under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Mosul.

According to a population statistic of 1898, the Syrian Catholic church had just under 23,000 members, organised in nine dioceses.

Like their Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean counterparts, the Syrian Catholic dioceses of Amid, Mardin and Gazarta were ruined in the First World War (Flavian Mikha’il Malke, Syrian Catholic bishop of Gazarta, was killed by the Turks in 1915), and were not afterwards revived. A new Syrian Catholic diocese was established for Hasakah in 1957, and the town has been the seat of a Syrian Catholic bishop since 1959. The diocese of Beirut has remained vacant since 1898, and the relatively small Syrian Catholic community of Beirut has been under the jurisdiction of a patriarchal vicar or apostolic administrator for most of the past eleven decades.

According to a Catholic statistic of 1962, the Syrian Catholic Church had just over 65,000 members in the Middle East at that time, plus a further 15,000 or so members in America and elsewhere.

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