ABUNA. – In Arabic, “our father”; this is what Christians in Arab countries call the priest. In Ethiopia it is the title of the head of the dissident Church.
A. is also the surname of Simeone IV, who was patriarch of the Nestorians (1437–77) and in 1450 made the patriarchate a hereditary right. In 1776, Elia X A. (1722–78) consecrated his nephew Giovanni Hormez bishop at the age of 16 so that he might succeed him instead of his other nephew Jesu-Yab. Hormez, however, having converted to Catholicism immediately after the death of Elia X, did not succeed him, and only in 1830 was he proclaimed patriarch of the Catholic Chaldeans. With him, in 1838, the line of patriarchs of the A. family, which had become Catholic, came to an end.
BIBL.: J. Zfinkdji, L'Église chaldéenne catholique (excerpt from the Annuaire pontifical catholique of Battandier), Parigi 1914, pp. 13–15; St. Bello, La Congrégation de S. Hormisdas et l'Église chaldéenne dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle, in Orient. Christ. Analecta, CXXII, Roma 1939. Pietro Sfair