With a presidential stroke of the pen, the legal situation of the largest Christian community in Iraq, the Chaldean Catholic Church, has been thrown into turmoil. At least three quarters of all Iraqi Christians belong to this community, whose head is Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako. The legal basis for being able to run an independent budget as a body controlled by its own hierarchy, in order to manage church buildings and employ staff, for example, was previously a presidential decree. This was issued in 2013 by former President Jalal Talabani. On 3 July 2023, President Abdul Latif Rashid revoked this decree, which was based on the Ottoman legal tradition.

Regulating the state-church relationship on the basis of such a decree contradicts the constitution and the law, according to an official statement. At the same time, other religious minorities had demanded corresponding legal framework conditions. The deletion without replacement deeply concerns the community. It remains unclear, for example, on what basis Chaldean Christians are now allowed to build churches or carry out renovation work.

On 13 July 2023, there were already public protests by members of this church in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. On 15 July, the Chaldean Patriarch finally announced that he would withdraw from Baghdad to Kurdistan: “I will go to Erbil until the problem is solved,” he said in an interview with the Catholic News Agency. Sako described the decision as a “provocative act” directed against Christians. It is not only the danger that the state will in future prevent the Church from disposing of its property and finances that worries the head and his community: the decision was taken after a meeting between the head of state and Rayan al-Kildani, leader of the “Babylon Movement”, the political arm of a pro-Iranian militia that occupies Christian property and real estate in the Nineveh Plain.