Joseph VI Audo

These internal feuds came to an end with Audo's accession, as he had taken the side of the monastery in its struggles with his predecessors. With the co-operation of the monks assured, the new patriarch did his best to ensure that Dambo's original vision was at last realized. The Monastery of Rabban Hormizd was too remote and exposed to attack to remain a functioning monastery, and was also a symbol of a turbulent time best forgotten. Audo decided to replace it and in 1859, with financial assistance from the Vatican, built a new monastery of Notre Dame des Semences in a safer and more convenient site near Alqosh. The new monastery quickly replaced Rabban Hormizd as the principal monastery of the Chaldean church. Two other important centres for the education of Chaldean clergy were also established at Mosul during Audo's reign, the patriarchal seminary of Saint Peter in 1866 and the Syro-Chaldean seminary of Saint John, completed shortly after Audo's death in 1878. The Syro-Chaldean seminary, which trained priests for both the Chaldean and Syriac Catholic churches, was under the direction of the Dominicans, while the patriarchal seminary was directed entirely by Chaldean clergy. Although a number of Chaldean priests continued to be trained at Rome or elsewhere, most of the bishops and priests of the Chaldean church in the decades before the First World War came from one or other of these three centers founded in Audo's reign.

Despite Audo's energetic investment in the future of the Chaldean church, his relations with the Vatican were often strained. An early sign of the patriarch's independent attitude was given in 1858, when he held a synod from 7 June to 21 June in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, whose validity was not recognized by Rome. In 1860 a far more serious clash occurred when the Malabar Catholics sent a delegation to Mosul to ask the patriarch to consecrate a bishop of their own rite for them. Despite the protests of the apostolic delegate at Mosul, Henri Amanton, Audo consecrated Thomas Rokos bishop of Basra and dispatched him to visit the Malabar Christians. Amanton thereupon censured the patriarch and his bishops, and Audo responded with two encyclicals to the priests and people of his church, the first on 21 December 1860 and the second on 4 January 1861. Shortly afterwards he departed to Rome to give an account of his actions, arriving at the end of June. He was there invited to recall Rokos, to write a letter of apology to the Propaganda and to make an act of submission to the pope. He complied with the first and third demands, and was received by the pope on 14 September. On 23 September he issued a third encyclical to his church, in which he admitted his mistakes and revoked measures he had taken against the apostolic delegation and the Dominican missionaries. He returned to Mosul on 2 December. Meanwhile, Rokos, who had been excommunicated on the Vatican's orders by the vicar apostolic of Verapoly on his arrival in India, returned in failure to Baghdad in June 1862.[2]

The affair did not end there. One of the members of the reunion which had given Rokos his mission, the metropolitan of Seert Peter Bar Tatar, refused to accept the censures carried by the delegate. The patriarch was again embroiled with the Dominicans, and issued an interdict on all the places where he arrived to celebrate in the presence of the Chaldeans. There was another incident on 5 June 1864. Audo consecrated Elias Mellus bishop of ʿAqra, but the new bishop omitted from his profession of faith passages relating to the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent. This was reported to Rome, and although Audo spoke up for his subordinate and the affair was resolved, animosity grew on both sides.

Joseph Audo

The Vatican seems to have decided thereafter to seek every opportunity to remind Audo of his position. In 1867 Gregory Peter di Natale, metropolitan of Amid, died at Rome. The Propaganda invoked the papacy's old privilege in such cases of directly appointing his successor, and asked the patriarch to submit three suitable names after discussion with his bishops. Shortly afterwards the diocese of Mardin also fell vacant with the death of Ignatius Dashto in 1868, and the Propaganda insisted on appointing his successor too. Audo duly submitted a list of seven names, and was directed to consecrate Peter Timothy ʿAttar metropolitan of Amid and Gabriel Farso metropolitan of Mardin. He was also informed that the provisions of the ecclesiastical constitution Reversurus promulgated on 12 July 1867 for the Armenian Catholic Church would in due course be applied to all the Eastern Catholic Churches, and on 31 August 1869 its rules for the election of bishops were applied to the Chaldean Church in the bull Cum ecclesiastica disciplina.

This was too much for Audo, and he refused to consecrate the bishops-designate of Amid and Mardin. He was summoned to Rome and in January 1870 forced to consecrate them. He complained that Rome was infringing the rights of the Eastern patriarchs, and was particularly aggrieved that the Syriac, Maronite and Melkite patriarchs had not yet agreed to accept the provisions of the 1867 constitution. As a result, in the 1870 First Vatican Council he was warmly welcomed as a member of the Church party opposed to the doctrine of papal infallibility, and joined in the opposition to the controversial constitution Pastor aeternus, absenting himself from the session at which it was promulgated. He then refused to adhere to it, giving the excuse that he could only take such a solemn step back home, among his own flock. He met the Sultan in Constantinople on 16 September 1870, and denounced the constitution as infringing on the traditional customs of the church and damaging the interests of the Ottoman empire. He declared that he had not accepted its provisions and never would. At the same time he celebrated Mass with the Armenian priests who had separated themselves from the patriarch Hassoun, and refused to reply to letters from the Propaganda. The Vatican, alarmed, used every means at its disposal to recall him to obedience and head off a threatened schism.[3] Finally, on 29 July 1872, last of all the eastern patriarchs, Audo wrote a letter accepting the decisions of the council. The Vatican decided to teach him a lesson. In Quae in patriarchatu, a stinging encyclical of 16 November 1872 addressed to the bishops, clergy and faithful of the Chaldean Church, Pope Pius IX rehearsed the many examples of Audo's intransigence, deplored his disobedience and welcomed his eventual submission. Audo's flock was left in little doubt as to who, in the Vatican's eyes, had been in the wrong.[4]

Audo clashed with the Vatican again in 1874. He asked pope Pius IX to restore to the Chaldean Church the traditional jurisdiction of the Church of the East over the Syrian Catholics of India. The Vatican delayed its response to this request and Audo decided not to wait. He sent Eliya Mellus, bishop of ʿAqra, to India as a metropolitan, where he was promptly excommunicated by the Vatican. On 24 May 1874, without prior consultation with the Vatican, he consecrated Eliya Peter ʿAbulyonan metropolitan of Gazarta and Mattai Paul Shamina metropolitan of ʿAmadiya. On 1 May 1875 he consecrated Quriaqos Giwargis Goga metropolitan of Zakho and Philip Yaʿqob Abraham metropolitan for India, to assist Elıya Mellus. The pope threatened in an encyclical letter of 1 September 1876 to excommunicate both the patriarch and the bishops whom he had consecrated unless they returned to obedience within 40 days. Audo yielded in March 1877 and wrote to recall Eliya Mellus and Philip Abraham from India. He was absolved from censure and commended for his compliance in the papal letters Solatio nobis fuit (9 June 1877) and Iucundum nobis (11 July 1877), and his episcopal appointments outside India were recognized.[3] However, after being deprived of the long-desired bishop Audo had provided them, some of the Syrian Catholics in India broke away in the Mellusian schism to form the Nestorian Chaldean Syrian Church.[5]

Joseph Audo died reconciled with the Vatican, in Mosul on March 14, 1878.[6]^: 740 His obituary was pronounced in a consistory held on 28 February 1879 by Pope Leo XIII, who praised him as "a man adorned with a fine sense of faith and belief" (quem eximius pietatis et religionis sensus ornabat). Although there are no lack of sources for his eventful career, he has not yet had a biographer.

Audo was succeeded as patriarch of Babylon by Eliya Peter ʿAbulyonan, metropolitan of Gazarta, who was elected in 1878 in the monastery of Notre Dame des Semences and confirmed on 28 February 1879 under the title Eliya XII.