Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Kirkuk-Sulaimaniya
The foundation of the Chaldean Catholic diocese of Kirkuk has been attributed to Yohannan VIII Hormizd, who was recognised by the Vatican as patriarchal administrator of the patriarch of Babylon in 1780 and, after five decades of disputes and confrontations, as patriarch in 1830. According to the Chaldean Catholic priest Joseph Tfinkdji, Yohannan Hormizd visited the town of Kirkuk in 1789 while travelling from Mosul to Baghdad, and converted its Church of the East community to Catholicism. He is said to have consecrated a Chaldean metropolitan for Kirkuk, Mar Abraham, who resided in Aïnqawa during his reign, and died between 1821 and 1824. The source for this assertion is not clear. Abraham is not mentioned by any other source, and as Yohannan Hormizd himself (then considered by the Vatican to be merely metropolitan of Mosul) is styled 'metropolitan of Kirkuk' in a colophon of 1798, the Kirkuk region would seem to have been part of the diocese of Mosul at this period.
Joseph VI Audo
In the early 19th century there was not yet a formal union between the two patriarchal lines that professed to be in communion with the Holy See. The ancient monastery of Rabban Hormizd, that for many centuries was the see of the Mama patriarchal family supported by most of the East Syrian Christians, in 1808 recognized as its own patriarch Mar Augustine Hindi, the leader of a patriarchal line started by Mar Joseph I in 1681 in union with Rome. This was fiercely opposed by the last descendant of the Mama family, Yohannan Hormizd, also in communion with Rome. Joseph Audo was a partisan of Mar Augustine Hindi and thus became an active opponent of Yohannan Hormizd: the strong conflict came to an end only through the direct intervention of two apostolic delegates sent by Rome in 1828-1829.