Mar Sargis Church

The Holy Apostolic and Catholic Assyrian Church of the East is a Christian church that traces its origins to the See of Babylon, said to be founded by Saint Thomas the Apostle.[citation needed] In India, it is known as the Chaldean Syrian Church. In the West it is often known, inaccurately, as the Nestorian Church. The Assyrian Church is the original Christian church in what was once Parthia; today Iraq and western Iran. Geographically it stretched in the medieval period to China and India: a monument found in Xi'an (Hsi-an), the Tang-period capital of China (originally Chang'an), in Chinese and Syriac described the activities of the church in the 7th and 8th century, while half a millennium later the Chinese monk Rabban Bar Sauma went from Beijing to Paris and Rome to call for a crusade with the Mongols against the Mamelukes. Prior to the Portuguese arrival in India in 1498, it provided "East Syrian" bishops to the Saint Thomas Christians.

Mar Dinkha IV

Mar Dinkha IV (Born September 15, 1935),is the present Patriarch of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East. He was born in Darbandoki and baptized in the church of Mar Qaryaqos. Later on he was ordained a deacon by Metropolitan Mar Yosip Khnanisho in the church of Mar Youkhanain Harir. He then became the bishop of Tehran, Iran where he brought many changes to the Assyrians of Iran. At a conference in London in 1976 he was chosen as Patriarch. In 1994 he agreed to a Joint Christological Declaration with the Vatican. In 1996 he signed an agreement of cooperation with Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad, Raphael I Bidawid, in Southfield,Michigan. In 1997 he entered into negotiations with the Syrian Orthodox Church and the two stopped anathemizing each other. Mar Dinkha currently lives near Chicago and Illinois is now generally the center of the Assyrian Church of the East.