The Syriac Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox church based in the Middle East, with members spread throughout the world. It parted ways with Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism over the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which the Syriac Orthodox Church rejects. It is a major inheritor of Syriac Christianity and has Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, as its official language. The church is led by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.