![Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholics Louis Raphael I Sako leads a mass, held at St. Joseph Church to mark Christmas in Baghdad, Iraq on December 24, 2021. [Murtadha Al-Sudani - Anadolu Agency]](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/20211224_2_51458007_71939563-500x333.jpg)
Vulgar distortion is not an occasional behaviour in Iraq; it has become the official language of the state’s looters — those who possess nothing but noise, bad faith and the instinct to weaponise words. They lie in wait for any phrase, seize any sentence, twist any meaning and turn it into ammunition against the few remaining voices of integrity. This is precisely what the ruling parties and militias did with the remarks of Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, Patriarch of Babylon, a man who has remained a rare model of Iraqi loyalty in a political class dominated by sectarian oligarchs who see Iraq only as spoils. Cardinal Sako has never ceased to condemn the fragmentation of Iraqis, nor has he ever […]
