Bashar Warda


Bashar Matti Warda is a Chaldean Catholic cleric and the current Archbishop of Erbil, Kurdistan Iraq.

Biography

Born in 1969, Warda joined the Saint Peter's Chaldean seminary in Baghdad and was ordained a priest in 1993. In 1995 he joined the Redemptorist order of Flanders in Belgium. After receiving his master's at the Catholic University of Louvain in 1999 he returned to Iraq.
Warda was apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Zaku from July 2007 until its merger with the Diocese of Amadiyah in June 2013.
In 2009 the Synod of Bishops of the Chaldean Catholic Church elected him Archbishop of the Archeparchy of Erbil. After Pope Benedict XVI gave his consent to this election in 2010 he was consecrated on 3 July of the same year.;
As part of his efforts to support the continuing Christian presence in Iraq, the Archbishop founded the Catholic University in Erbil, which was inaugurated in 2015.
On 17 May 2017 he was received by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales in Clarence House, London.

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