Cathedral of Saints George and Nicholas

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The Cathedral of Saints George and Nicholas , also George and Nicholas Cathedral ( Arabic كنيسة القديسين جاورجيوس ونيقولاوس للروم الملكيين الكاثوليك), is a church in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad that was consecrated in 1962. It is the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Baghdad of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church .

Location

The Greek Catholic St. George and Nicholas Cathedral is located in the Karrada district at 38 m above sea level, about 1 km east of the east bank of the Tigris and about 100 m northeast of the Chaldean Catholic St. Joseph's Cathedral (two blocks further).

history

The Melkite Greek Catholic Church was hardly present in Mesopotamia until the 19th century. The Patriarchal Exarchate Iraq of the Greek Catholic Church was founded by the Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church Maximos III. Mazloum founded on September 17, 1838. The first Melkite priest, Makarios Andraos from Aleppo , however, joined the Syrian Catholics in Baghdad, while Romanos Kallab joined the Armenian Catholics after Makariou's death in 1886 . His successor from 1926, Archimandrite Maximos Hakim, again began to build up his own Melkite community, and the first Melkite chapel in the Christian quarter of Aqd an-Nasara in Baghdad was built. In the Karrada district , the Church of Saints George and Nicholas was finally built, which was consecrated on April 27, 1962 and now served as the cathedral of the Melkite Patriarchal Exarchate of Iraq.

After the invasion of Iraq by US troops in 2003, life for the Melkite and other Christians became almost unbearable because of the persecution of Christians by Islamist insurgents. The Melkitsche Cathedral of Saints George and Nicholas was destroyed by a bomb attack on October 17, 2003. It was rebuilt, but the number of Melkite believers in the Exarchate of Iraq fell to 400 in 2011 and further to 200 in 2012 and 2017. The last archbishop, Georges El-Murr , who was born in Lebanon in 1930 and has been in office since 2007 , took office about 2004 back from office. Since then the exarchate seat has been vacant .

architecture

The Greek Catholic St. George and Nicholas Cathedral is a cruciform church standing in a south-west-north-east direction with a long nave and a short transept, which crosses the former near the northeast end. Above the crossing is a drum with a round cross-section and twelve windows, on top of which is a hemispherical dome with a cross. In the northeast are the altar and the apse. Both the main and the transept are covered with a barrel roof. At the north-western end there is a porticus and above it an upper floor on which a three-storey bell tower with a square cross-section and a domed roof with a cross sits.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. Antoine Dib BS: Melkite Greek Catholic Church - Patriarchal Exarchates for Iraq, Kuwait and Istanbul ( Memento of April 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East of Alexandia and of Jerusalem.
  2. ↑ a b Cathedral of St. George and St. Nicholas - Baghdad, Iraq. Gcatholic.org, May 19, 2020, accessed July 15, 2020.
  3. ↑ Entry on Patriarchal Exarchate of Iraq (Melkite Greek) on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on August 16, 2020.

Coordinates: 33 ° 18 ′ 5 "  N , 44 ° 25 ′ 41.3"  E