** Thousands of Iraqi Christians cross Tiber
By Ed West
23 May 2008
Three thousand Iraqi Christians have been received into the Chaldean Catholic Church in California, with up to 300 in Britain also joining an “exodus” into the Church.
The congregation of the Assyrian Church of the East were reconciled with Rome after Bishop Mar Bawai Soro was suspended by its Synod. The bishop served as the Church of the East’s Bishop for California and was also the Secretary-General of his Church’s Inter-Church Relations and Education Development. However the hierarchy were unhappy with his ecumenical position and attempts to bring the church closer to the Vatican.
In November 2005 the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East_(ACE) issued an official letter to Bishop Soro informing him of his expulsion.
The man described by Fr Robert Taft as a “zealous and brilliant religious leader of his people” has felt that, in this time of intense religious persecution in Iraq, the church’s traditional isolation from the rest of Christendom was counter-productive.
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