Kirkuk (Chaldean Archeparchy)

The Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Kirkuk (Arabic: ابرشية كركوك الكلدانية‎) is an archeparchy of the Chaldean Catholic Church in communion with the Pope in Rome. The archdeparchy was created in the early years of the nineteenth century. Its present ordinary, Archbishop Yousif Thomas Mirkis, was consecrated in 2014.

The Chaldean archdiocese of Kirkuk was the successor to the classical diocese of Karka d'Beth Slokh, the metropolis of the ecclesiastical province of Beth Garmaï. The region of Beth Garmaï in southern Iraq, bounded by the Lesser Zab and Diyala rivers and centered on the town of Karka d'Beth Slokh (modern Kirkuk), was a metropolitan province of the Church of the East between the fifth and fourteenth centuries, whose metropolitans resided first at Shahrgard, then at Karka d'Beth Slokh, later at Shahrzur and finally at Daquqa. The known suffragan dioceses of Beth Garmaï included Shahrgard, Lashom, Mahoze d'Arewan, Radani, Hrbath Glal, Tahal and Shahrzur.

The last known metropolitan of Beth Garmaï is attested in the thirteenth century and the last known bishop in 1318, though the historian ʿAmr continued to describe Beth Garmai as a metropolitan province as late as 1348. It is not clear when the province ceased to exist, but the campaigns of Timur Leng between 1390 and 1405 offer a reasonable context. A small Assyrian Church of the East community persisted at Kirkuk between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, some of whose scribes are known. Kirkuk was probably part of the Assyrian Church of the East diocese of Erbil until its lapse in the seventeenth century, and thereafter part of the diocese of Mosul.

The Assyrian community of Kirkuk was still Church of the East in sympathy in the first half of the eighteenth century. The Carmelite missionary Father Benedict visited Kirkuk on 20 May 1743, where he found 'a large number of Nestorians very ignorant of religion'. Speaking of the efforts of Catholic missionaries in the district, he said that 'there are many difficulties at Kirkuk, and few results'.

...
Wikipedia