Chaldeans and other religious minorities in Iraq have endured
extensive persecution since 2003, including the abductions and murders
of their religious leaders, threats of violence or death if they do not
abandon their homes and businesses, and the bombing or destruction of
their churches and other places of worship. All this has occurred as
anti-Christian emotions rise within Iraq. It reached its peak after the
fall of Saddam and the rise of Shiite Muslims in the Iraqi government.
Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, pastor of the Chaldean Church of the Holy Spirit, was killed on 3 June 2007 in Mosul, Iraq alongside the subdeacons Basman Yousef Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed, after he celebrated mass.
Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho and three companions were abducted on 29 February 2008, Mosul, Iraq, and murdered a few days later.
In the Bulgarian census of 2001, a total of 43,811 people declared themselves to be Roman Catholics, down from 53,074 in the previous census of 1992, due mainly to intermarriage and emigration. The vast majority of the Catholics in Bulgaria in 2001 were ethnic Bulgarians, although 2,500 of them were Turks and additional 2,000 belonged to a number of other ethnic groups.
Bulgarian Catholics live predominantly in the regions of Svishtov and Plovdiv and are mostly descendants of the heretical Christian sect of the Paulicians, which converted to Roman Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries. The largest Roman Catholic Bulgarian town is Rakovski in Plovdiv Province. Ethnic Bulgarian Roman Catholics known as the Banat Bulgarians also inhabit the Central European region of the Banat. Their number is unofficially estimated at about 12,000, although Romanian censuses count only 6,500 Banat Bulgarians in the Romanian part of the region.
Bulgarian Catholics are descendants of three groups. The first one is the group of the Catholics of northwestern Bulgaria, who are successors of Saxon ore miners that settled the area in the Middle Ages and that gradually became Bulgarian, as well as people from the colonies of the Republic of Ragusa in the larger cities. Converted Paulicians from the course of the Osam (between Stara Planina and the Danube) and from around Plovdiv are the second (and largest) group, while the third (and most limited) one is formed by more recent Eastern Orthodox converts.
At the beginning of 2005, the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church had 20 parishes, of which 13 had obtained state recognition. As of 2003, there have been two Belarusian Greek Catholic parishes in each of the following cities - Minsk, Polatsk and Vitsebsk; and only one in Brest, Hrodna, Mahiliou, Maladziechna and Lida. The faithful permanently attached to these came to about 3,000, while some 4,000 others lived outside the pastoral range of the parishes. There were 10 priests, and 15 seminarians. There was a small Studite monastery at Polatsk.
Two of the parishes had small churches. Some of the others had pastoral centres with an oratory.
Belarusian Greek Catholics abroad, numbering about 2,000, are under the care of Mitred Protopresbyter Alexander Nadson as Apostolic Visitator. The chief centres are in London and Antwerp (constituted in 2003).
A parish in Chicago, that of Christ the Redeemer, existed from 1955 to 2003. It was founded by Father John Chrysostom Tarasevich and was later the home parish of Bishop Uladzimir Tarasevich until his death, after which it was administered by the local Latin Catholic ordinary, who appointed first Father Joseph Cirou and then Father John Mcdonnell as administrators. On 7 September 1996, the parish had seen the ordination of Michael Huskey as the first Belarusian deacon in the United States. Father Deacon Michael served in the parish until it was closed by Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, on 20 July 2003.
The Armenian Catholic Church (Armenian: Հայ Կաթողիկէ ԵկեղեցիHay Kat’oġikē Ekeġec’i) is an Eastern Catholic Churchsui juris in union with the other Eastern Rite, Oriental Rite and Latin Rite Catholics who accept the Bishop of Rome as spiritual leader of the Church. It is regulated by Eastern canon law. Since 1749, the Armenian Catholic Church has been headquartered at the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate complex in Bzoummar, Lebanon.
Apart from Armenia, France and North America (Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico), sizable Armenian Catholic communities exist in Argentina, Australia, Lebanon, Syria, Romania and Turkey.
