U.S. SURAYE DIASPORA: Assyrian Church of the East Bishop Mar Daniel Jacobs passes away

ROSEVILLE / CALIFORNIA, United States – Bishop Mar Daniel Jacobs passed away on October 21, 2020 in Roseville, California. According to the statement by the Syriac Assyrian Church of the East, the late Bishop was consecrated in March, 1973 by His Beatitude the late Mar Yosip Khnanisho at Mar Zaia Cathedral in Baghdad, Iraq, as Bishop for the Diocese of Kerkeshlokh (Kirkuk), Iraq. The late Syriac Assyrian Patriarch His Holiness Mar Dinkha IV, who was at that time the Bishop of Tehran, Iran, was present at the consecration.

The late Mar Daniel Jacobs followed his spiritual children into the Suraye diaspora in the United States. California is home to a large Suraya (Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian) diaspora with major communities and Chaldean Catholic, Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox, and Syriac Catholic churches in San Diego, Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay area (e.g. Turlock, Modesto, Felton, Ceres, Sacramento, Fresno), and Los Angeles. According to the 2000 United States Census there are some 23 thousand Suraye living in California. This number will have increased significantly after the post-2003 toppling of the Saddam Hussein Baath regime.