ACI MENA portal reports: the Chaldean Synod elected Archbishop Amel Shamon Nona as the new patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, succeeding Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, who submitted his resignation to “Pope” Leo XIV on March 9 amid a financial and legal scandal concerning a former Chaldean bishop in San Diego. The statement of the synod speaks of “full communion with the fathers of the synod, in service of the unity of the Chaldean Church and its mission in the homeland and the diaspora,” and calls upon clergy and faithful alike to unite around the new patriarch. The entire process unfolded under the direct supervision and authority of the conciliar antipope in Rome. The election of a patriarch in a so-called Eastern Catholic Church is in reality a rubber-stamp approval by the Vatican apparatus of a candidate pre-screened for loyalty to the post-conciliar revolution, conducted in a climate of financial corruption and spiritual ruin.
The Illusion of Eastern Autonomy: Papal Supremacy as a Tool of Conciliar Control
The article presents the election of the new Chaldean patriarch as a normal, even spiritually edifying event — the synod deliberated “in a spirit of prayer and ecclesial discernment,” and the new patriarch accepted “in accordance with canonical norms.” Yet beneath this veneer of canonical propriety lies a fundamental reality that the article dares not examine: the complete subjugation of all Eastern Catholic Churches to the Roman antipapal apparatus. The very fact that Cardinal Sako submitted his resignation to “Pope” Leo XIV — a manifest heretic and usurper of the Chair of Peter — and that the synod convened in Rome under the Vatican’s direct oversight, demonstrates that these churches are no longer autonomous sui iuris bodies preserving their ancient traditions, but rather colonial appendages of the conciar sect.
The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO), promulgated in 1990 by the antipope John Paul II, was itself a modernist instrument designed to bring the Eastern churches more firmly under Roman centralized control. Canon 76 §2 of the CCEO states that the Roman Pontiff has authority over the Eastern churches — but this very principle, when exercised by a heretical antipope, becomes an instrument of destruction rather than unity. As the sedevacantist position, grounded in the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, affirms: “A Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (De Romano Pontifice, II:30). Leo XIV, as a successor of John XXIII and participant in the conciliar apostasy, possesses no jurisdiction whatsoever — neither over the Latin Church nor over the Eastern Catholic churches. His acceptance of Sako’s resignation and his role in the appointment of Nona are ipso facto null and void.
The article notes that Nona “pursued higher studies in Rome, earning a doctorate in theological anthropology from the Pontifical Lateran University.” This detail is far from innocent. Theological anthropology — as distinct from the perennial Catholic theology of man as created in the image of God, fallen through original sin, and redeemed solely through the grace of Christ — is a hallmark of modernist thought. The Pontifical Lateran University, like every other pontifical institution since the 1960s, has been a breeding ground for the errors condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu. That the future patriarch received his formation in such an environment is itself a guarantee that he will continue the modernist trajectory of his predecessors.
The Scandal of Financial Corruption: Symptom of Spiritual Bankruptcy
The article references the “financial and legal scandal concerning a former Chaldean bishop in San Diego” — Bishop Emanuel Shaleta, arrested on charges of embezzling Church funds. Cardinal Sako allegedly attempted to support or transfer this embattled bishop to a higher position. The article presents this as a mere administrative embarrassment, a footnote to the patriarch’s resignation. This is a catastrophic failure to recognize the spiritual dimension of the crisis.
Financial corruption within the clergy is not an isolated moral failing — it is the natural and inevitable fruit of the destruction of Catholic formation, the abolition of true seminary discipline, and the replacement of the supernatural virtues with naturalistic humanism. When the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is no longer understood as the propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary, when the priesthood is redefined as “service” rather than alter Christus, when the pursuit of holiness is replaced by the pursuit of “social justice” and “dialogue” — the result is clergy who see Church funds as their personal property and Church positions as career opportunities.
The Council of Trent taught with the authority of the infallible Magisterium: “If anyone says that the sacraments of the New Law were not all instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ; or that they are more or less than seven, namely, Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony; or even that any one of these seven is not truly and properly a sacrament — let him be anathema” (Session VII, Canon 1). The post-conciliar reforms have effectively gutted the sacramental system, replacing it with a naturalistic simulacrum. In such an environment, embezzlement is not an aberration — it is the logical consequence.
ISIS, Persecution, and the Silence on the True Cause of Christian Suffering
The article mentions that Nona “left Mosul along with his faithful following the takeover of the city by the terrorist group ISIS in 2014, marking a pivotal moment in the modern history of the Chaldean Church.” This is presented as a neutral historical fact. What the article utterly fails to address is why Christians are persecuted in the Middle East.
The conciliar sect, through its relentless pursuit of “dialogue with Islam” and its systematic refusal to name the enemies of Christ, has actively contributed to the destruction of Christian communities in the Middle East. The declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) — promulgated by the antipope Paul VI — declared that the Church “regards with esteem” the Muslims, who “profess the faith of Abraham” and “adore the one God.” This document, a cornerstone of the conciar revolution, is a direct contradiction of the perennial Catholic teaching that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) and that Islam is a false and heretical religion.
Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), proclaimed that the reign of Christ the King extends over all nations and all peoples, and that states have a public duty to recognize and obey Him. The conciliar sect has abandoned this teaching in favor of religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), which Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors as the proposition that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Proposition 15 — condemned). The persecution of Christians in Mosul, in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East is the direct fruit of the conciliar sect’s betrayal of the Social Kingship of Christ.
The Diaspora: Dispersion as Dissolution
The article notes that in 2015, Nona was appointed head of the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle in Australia and New Zealand, “where he continued his pastoral ministry among the Chaldean diaspora.” The very concept of a “diaspora” church — a scattered, displaced community dependent on the goodwill of secular governments and the administrative structures of the conciliar Vatican — is antithetical to the Catholic understanding of the Church as a visible, hierarchical, and territorial society.
The article speaks of the synod’s concern for “the organization of Church life both locally and in the diaspora” as if this were a merely logistical challenge. In reality, the dissolution of ancient Christian communities in the Middle East and their replacement by scattered diaspora communities in Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere is a form of ecclesial genocide — the destruction of the organic, rooted, territorial life of the Church and its replacement by a rootless, bureaucratized, and thoroughly modernist institution.
Leo XIII, in the encyclical Immortale Dei (1885), taught that the Church is a perfect society, endowed by her Divine Founder with all the means necessary for her own governance and the salvation of souls. The diaspora model — dependent on secular governments for legal recognition, on the conciar Vatican for appointments, and on modernist theological institutions for formation — is the precise opposite of this Catholic understanding. It is, in fact, the model of a voluntary association — a sect — rather than the one true Church of Christ.
The Language of Conciliar Servility
The statement issued by the Chaldean bishops is a masterpiece of modernist ecclesial language: “full communion with the fathers of the synod,” “service of the unity of the Chaldean Church,” “bearing witness to the Gospel,” “shared responsibility for the good of the Church and the growth of its mission.” Every phrase is carefully calibrated to echo the conciliar documents — Lumen Gentium, Unitatis Redintegratio, Ad Gentes — while avoiding any mention of the supernatural realities that alone give the Church her reason for existence.
There is no mention of the salvation of souls, the state of grace, the necessity of the sacraments, the reality of hell, or the final judgment. The “mission” of the Church is reduced to “bearing witness to the Gospel” — a phrase deliberately vague enough to encompass everything and nothing. The “unity” sought is not unity in the Catholic faith, but a bureaucratic unity of administrative structures under the control of the antipope in Rome.
The article’s description of Sako’s resignation — he submitted it “of his own free will” so he could “dedicate himself quietly to prayer, writing, and simple service” — is a masterpiece of euphemism. A patriarch who attempted to protect a bishop accused of embezzlement, who presided over a church in terminal decline, and who submitted his authority to a heretic in Rome, is described as seeking “quiet prayer.” This is the language of a Church that has lost all sense of the supernatural and can only speak in the therapeutic, naturalistic vocabulary of the modern world.
The Question of Validity
It must be asked: to what extent are the sacraments administered within the Chaldean Catholic Church — as it currently exists under the authority of the conciliar Vatican — valid? This is not a question of the Chaldean rite itself, which is ancient and venerable, but of the intention and authority of those who administer it.
If a patriarch is appointed by a heretical antipope, if the bishops who elect him are themselves formed in modernist seminaries and participate in the conciliar apostasy, if the priests they ordain receive a formation that has been stripped of true Catholic theology — then the very validity of their sacramental acts must be called into question. The Church has always taught that the validity of Holy Orders depends not only on the correct form and matter but also on the proper intention of the minister. When that intention has been corrupted by modernism — when the priesthood is understood as a “ministry of service” rather than the power to offer the Holy Sacrifice and remit sins — the sacraments administered under such a defective intention are at best suspect, and at worst invalid.
The faithful who depend on these structures for their spiritual lives are in grave danger. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici gregis: “Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies” — and the Chaldean Catholic Church, as it currently exists under the authority of the conciliar antipope, is thoroughly saturated with modernist principles.
Conclusion: The Triumph of the Conciliar Revolution
The election of Patriarch Mar Paul III Nona is not the beginning of a new era for the Chaldean Church. It is the continuation and consolidation of the conciliar revolution that has been destroying the Catholic Church — in all her rites and traditions — since the calling of the Second Vatican Council by the antipope John XXIII in 1959.
The ancient Chaldean Church, with its rich liturgical tradition and its heritage of martyrdom, deserves better than to be reduced to a bureaucratic appendage of the modernist Vatican apparatus. The faithful of the Chaldean tradition — and indeed all Catholics — must recognize that the only hope for the restoration of the Church lies in the return to the integral Catholic faith as it was taught and practiced before the conciliar revolution: the faith of the ecumenical councils, the faith of the Fathers, the faith of St. Pius X and Pius XI, the faith that proclaims Jesus Christ as King of all nations and the Catholic Church as the sole ark of salvation.
Until that restoration comes — and it will come, for the gates of hell shall not prevail — the structures occupying the Vatican, including all the Eastern Catholic Churches under its control, remain what they have been since 1958: the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15).
Source:
Chaldean Church chooses Archbishop Amel Nona as patriarch, succeeding Cardinal Sako (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 12.04.2026