CoE / ACoE monasteries

[Paul Younan]

but i've seen this page before, and all the monasteries listed
are currently taken care of by Chaldeans.

Shlama Ilan,

The reason why all the CoE monasteries in Iraq are currently taken care of by the Chaldean Church is because of

(1) the power of the Catholic missionaries with the Ottoman Turks and the Kurds, who forced the majority of our Church into Catholicism (the "Chaldean" church was created by Rome and is subordinate to it)

(2) the previous regime (and the one before it) in Baghdad, and also the position of power held by Tariq Aziz (a member of the Chaldean Church.)

The only other monasteries we had were in Turkey (in the Hakkari region), but all of the CoE there were either slaughtered or fled slaughter in 1915 when 2/3 of our populations was massacred. My Grandparents were survivors of this holocaust.

In our village of Mezrea in the Tkhouma district of Hakkari, in modern-day Turkey, we had a monastery of "Rabban Pithyou" (Monk Pithyou) which was a 3rd-century monastery.

If you take a look at the cover of this book, this is a relative of mine, Rabban Younan (monk Younan) who resided in this monastery in the 19th century.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/01982674...eader-link

We are in a state of repair now after centuries of slaughter, and because we have left all of our monasteries in Iraq and in Turkey - those in Turkey aren't being taken care of at, all since 1915, they are totally abandoned. We only have churches today.

Becoming a monk at this point in our history is also discouraged, so the monastic life has died out, since our numbers are so low from so many genocides over the centuries. Right now, people are being married off so that we can preserve our numbers - celibacy is not really an option at this point.

There may be a monastery or two in India, the person to contact there would be Mar Aprim who is the metropolitan bishop there. I think Dean Dana has his email address. Here is the page - but on here he says the same thing about monasticism these days...

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.nestorian.org/church_of_the_east_in_india.html">http://www.nestorian.org/church_of_the_ ... india.html</a><!-- m -->

Take care.