Career
There was also a Patriarch Joseph IV of the Maronites, who ruled in 1644–1648. Lazar Hindi, born on 14 September 1726, educated by the Urban college in Rome, was elected patriarch after the death, happened on 23 January 1757, of his predecessor Joseph III Timothy Maroge. He was consecrated bishop on 8 February 1757 by Yohannan Basil, bishop of Mardin (died 1758), who in turn was consecrated bishop in 1741 by Joseph III. Lazar Hindi was confirmed patriarch by the Clement XIII on 25 March 1759 and received the pallium on 9 April 1759.
He took the name of Joseph (Youssef) IV. From 1765 to 1768 he went to Rome for printing Chaldean liturgical books and Gospels.
Lazar Hindi coped with the main problem of his predecessors: the tax burdens imposed by the Ottoman authorities on his churches with any kind of pretexts. As his predecessor, in the 1770s he visited the European courts to raise funds but without results.
Informed of this, Lazar Hindi withdrew his resignation and remained in Amid. In 1789 Lazar Hindi was imprisoned by the Turkish authorities for his debt of twenty thousand piastras.
He escaped in 1790 and left for Rome.
When he arrived in Rome in March 1791, he found that the Vatican was not so interested in his little patriarchate, while was working on possible unions with both the patriarchate of Qochanis, whose patriarch March Shimun XV Maqdassi Mikhail in 1770 wrote to Rome to establish contacts, and mainly with the ancient patriarchate of Alqosh, contended by two cousins, one of which, Yohannan VIII Eliya Hormizd, considered himself a Catholic. In 1791 the Vatican had given the government of Amid, the main town of Lazar Hindi"s patriarchate, to Yohannan Hormizd. Lazar Hindi died in Italy in 1796.