the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A dispute between the Palestinian Authority and the Greek Patriarch Irenaios led to the Patriarch being dismissed and demoted because of accusations of a real estate deal with Israel. It was later ruled uncanonical by Patriarch Bartholomew. Rūm The homeland of the Antiochian Greek Christians, known as the Diocese of the East, was one of the major commercial, agricultural, religious, and intellectual areas of the Roman Empire, and its strategic location facing the Persian Sassanid Empire gave it exceptional military importance. They are either members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch or the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, and they have ancient roots in the Levant; more specifically, the territories of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Hatay, which includes the city of Antakya (ancient Antioch). Antiochian Greeks constitute a multi-national group of people and thus construct their identity in relation to specific historical moments. Analyzing cultural identity as a conscious construction is more helpful than a simple labelling of ethnicity, thus the identity is assumed to accentuate the separate origin unique to the Christian Rūm (literally "Eastern Romans") of the Levant. Some members of the community also call themselves Melkite, which means "monarchists" or "supporters of the emperor" (a reference to their past allegiance to Macedonian and Roman imperial rule) although in the modern era, that term tends to be more commonly used by followers of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. The Orthodox Christian congregation was included in an ethno-religious community, Rum Millet ("Roman nation"), during the Ottoman Empire. Its name was derived from the former Eastern Roman (Byzantine) subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but all Orthodox Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians and Serbs, as well as Georgians and Middle Eastern Christians, were considered part of the same millet in spite of their differences in ethnicity and language. Belonging to this Orthodox commonwealth became more important to the common people than their ethnic origins. Chaldean The former Patriarch of the Chaldean Church, Emmanuel III Delly, made the following comment in a 2006 interview:"Any Chaldean who calls himself an Assyrian is a traitor and any Assyrian who calls himself Chaldean is a traitor."The Chaldean Church—which had been part of the Nestorian Church, or Church of the East, until 1552–3—began in earnest to distance itself from the Nestorians who were now seen as the 'uncouth Assyrians'. During this period, many Chaldeans began identifying themselves solely by their