Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Kirkuk-Sulaimaniya

[1] The Chaldean archdiocese of Kirkuk was the successor to the earlier 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 Carmelite missionary Father Benedict visited Kirkuk on 20 May 1743, where he found 'a large number of Nestorians very ignorant of religion'.

According to the Chaldean Catholic priest Joseph Tfinkdji, Yohannan Hormizd visited the town of Kirkuk in 1789 while travelling from Mosul to Baghdad, and converted its Church of the East community to Catholicism.

Whether or not Yohannan Hormizd was able to consecrate a metropolitan for Kirkuk, the sympathies of the town's Assyrian Catholics were clearly of some significance during the power struggle between the patriarchal administrator and his opponents in the Chaldean Church and the Vatican.

In 1795 the Vatican's representative Padre Fulgenzio appears to have tried to persuade the Chaldean Catholics of Kirkuk to withdraw their allegiance from Yohannan Hormizd.

According to Yohannan Hormizd's own account, quoted by Badger: Padre Fulgenzio, however, departed and went to Selook, which is Kerkook, and created divisions among the Meshihayé there, and he did the same at Ainkâwa.

Eliya Joseph Khayyat was succeeded by Theodore Msayeh, who was born in Baghdad around 1837, educated at the College of the Propaganda, and ordained a priest at Rome in 1870.

The Metropolitans of Kirkuk during the second half of the twentieth century were Ephrem Guogue (1954–6), Rufa'il Rabban (1957–67), Gabriel Qoda (7 March 1968 – 1977) and Andrew Sana (1977-2002).

In 1928, according to an official statistic prepared by the Sacred Congregation pro Ecclesia Orientali, it contained seven villages, 18 priests and 4,800 believers.

The significant rise in the Chaldean population of Kirkuk and Shaqlawa since 1913 seems to have been mainly due to the resettlement of Assyrian refugees in the district during the intervening years.