Sabri Anar

Sabri Anar (1 January 1966 to 17 October 2026) was a Turkish-born Chaldean Catholic priest and archbishop who spent more than three decades serving the Chaldean diaspora in France before returning to his homeland in 2023 as Archbishop of Diyarbakır (Amida), the spiritual leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Turkey. Known in Sarcelles as a pastor who built churches as well as congregations, he died in France on 17 October 2026 at the age of 60 after a long illness with cancer.

Anar was born on 1 January 1966 in the village of Doğan in the Uludere district of Şırnak Province, in south-eastern Turkey, a region with deep roots in Chaldean and Assyrian Christian history. He studied at the Franciscan minor seminary in Istanbul and in 1985 entered the Chaldean Patriarchal Seminary in Baghdad, where he completed his philosophical and theological formation.

On 10 November 1990 he was ordained a priest in Paris, at the Sacré-Cœur church, by Archbishop Youhannan Semaan Issayi, and he celebrated his first Mass the following day. From the start his ministry was devoted to the fast-growing Chaldean community of the Île-de-France region, many of whom had arrived from south-eastern Turkey and Iraq. From 1990 to 2006 he served as parish vicar of Saint Thomas Apôtre in Sarcelles, in the Val-d'Oise, and he then became its parish priest. From 2016 he was also responsible for the church of Saint Jean Apôtre in Arnouville. He served as syncellus for the Chaldean faithful in France and earned a master's degree in catechetics from the Institut Catholique de Paris.

His parish remembered him above all as a builder. Chaldean community sources credit him with building the two Chaldean churches of the Val-d'Oise, Saint Thomas in Sarcelles and Saint Jean Apôtre in Arnouville, and a Ninway TV documentary about him was titled The Builder. He appeared regularly on the France 2 programme Chrétiens Orientaux, explaining Chaldean liturgy and sacraments to French viewers, and during the Covid-19 pandemic his parish published a multi-part video in which he told and sang the story of the epidemic in Sureth and French. On 12 November 2017 Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako ordained him a chorbishop of the Chaldean Church at Saint Thomas Apôtre.

The Synod of the Chaldean Church elected him Archbishop of Diyarbakır (Amida) of the Chaldeans, and on 24 May 2023 Pope Francis gave his assent. In a farewell message to his Sarcelles parishioners he thanked them for 33 years of walking together in the Church and said that their faith and generosity had made both him and the community grow. The city of Sarcelles presented him with its medal on 1 July 2023. On 16 July 2023 he was consecrated at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Harbiye, Istanbul, by Patriarch Sako, with Archbishop Ramzi Garmou, Apostolic Nuncio Marek Solczyński and Bishop Stanislas Lalanne of Pontoise as co-consecrators. His jurisdiction covered the whole of Turkey, with the historic see in Diyarbakır and his residence in Istanbul. Turkish media noted that his appointment gave the Mar Petyun Chaldean Church in Diyarbakır's Sur district its first archbishop in 108 years.

As archbishop he made periodic visits to Chaldean villages in the Şırnak and Hakkari regions. The European Syriac Union later said those visits helped families reconnect with the villages of their ancestors and described his return to the homeland as a development of profound historical significance.

Anar fell seriously ill with cancer and spent roughly the last ten months of his life receiving treatment in France, according to Chaldean priest Remzi Diril. After a health setback, Chaldean Patriarch Mar Paulos III Nona travelled to Paris on 2 October 2026 to visit him in hospital and asked the faithful to pray for him. He died on the morning of Saturday 17 October 2026 in France, aged 60. The Spiritual Council and Foundation Board of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Turkey said he had devoted his life to serving the Church and its congregation and announced that his funeral would take place in Paris. Tributes came from the Diocese of Pontoise and its bishop Benoît Bertrand, the Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak and the Catholic bishops of Egypt, the European Syriac Union, and L'Œuvre d'Orient, which called him a builder pastor in Sarcelles and Arnouville.