ABUNA. — In Arabic “our father”; thus the Christians of the Arab countries call the priest. In Ethiopia it is the title of the head of the dissident Church.
A. is also the surname of SIMONE 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 as bishop at the age of 16 to succeed him instead of his other nephew GESÙ-YAB. HORMEZ, however, having converted to Catholicism shortly after the death of ELIA X, did not succeed him, and it was only in 1830 that he was preconized patriarch of the Chaldean Catholics. With him, in 1838, the line of patriarchs of the A. family, now Catholic, came to an end.
BIBL.: J. Zinkdji, L'Église chaldaïenne catholique (extract from the Annuaire pontifical catholique of Batandier), Paris 1914, pp. 13–15; St. Bello, La Congregation de S. Hormisdas et l'Église chaldaïenne dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle, in Orient. Christ. Analecta, CXXII, Rome 1939. PIETRO SFAIR