The Melkite Greek Catholic Church (, ; ; ), or Melkite Byzantine Catholic Church, is an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See as part of the worldwide Catholic Church. Its chief pastor is Patriarch Youssef Absi, headquartered at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Dormition, Damascus, Syria. The Melkites, who are Byzantine Rite Catholics, trace their history to the early Christians of Antioch, formerly part of Syria and now in Turkey, of the 1st century AD, where Christianity was introduced by Saint Peter. The Melkite Church, like many other Eastern Catholic particular churches, shares the Byzantine Rite with the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and other Eastern Orthodox churches. It is mainly centered in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. Melkite Greek Catholics are present, however, throughout the world by migration due to persecution. Outside the Near East, the Melkite Church has also grown through intermarriage with, and the conversion of, people of various ethnic heritages as well as transritualism. At present there is a worldwide membership of approximately 1.6 million. While the Melkite Catholic Church's Byzantine liturgical traditions are shared with those of Eastern Orthodoxy, the church has officially been part of the Catholic Church since re-entering communion with the Holy See under Patriarch Cyril VI Tanas in 1724. Those who rejected this move formed the extant Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. Name Melkite, from the Syriac word malkā for "King" and the Arabic word Malakī (, meaning "royal", and by extension, "imperial"), was originally a pejorative term for Middle Eastern Christians who accepted the authority of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and the Byzantine Emperor, a term applied to them by non-Chalcedonians. Of the Chalcedonian churches, Greek Catholics continue to use the term, while Eastern Orthodox do not. The Greek element signifies the Byzantine Rite heritage of the church, the liturgy used by all the Eastern Orthodox churches. The term Catholic acknowledges communion with the Church of Rome and implies participation in the universal Christian church. According to Church tradition, the Melkite Church of Antioch is the "oldest continuous Christian community in the world". In Arabic, the official language of the church, it is called ar-Rūm al-Kāṯūlīk (). The Arabic word "Rūm" means Eastern Romans, from the Greek word "Romaioi" by which the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans (called "Byzantines" in modern parlance) had continued to identify themselves even when the Roman empire had ceased