Egyptian Coptic Pope Dies

[Crateria]

http://www.euronews.com/newswires/14419 ... es-adviser

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian Coptic Christian Pope Shenouda III, the patriarch of most of Egypt’s estimated 12 million Christians, died on Saturday from old age, his political adviser told Reuters.

Bells tolled in Cairo’s Abbasiya district, site of Egypt’s main Coptic cathedral, as the news spread.

Shenouda, 88, became the 117th Pope of Alexandria in November 1971, and was popular among Egypt’s Christians and Muslims alike during his four decades in power.

His successor will play a central role in forging the church’s position in the country after the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak last year. Islamist parties have since swept parliamentary elections and will dominate the debate over drawing up the country’s new constitution.

“He died from complications in health and from old age,” adviser Hany Aziz said. Shenouda had recently returned from abroad where he had been seeking medical treatment.

Shenouda’s criticism of the government’s handling of an Islamic insurgency in the 1970s, in which Christians were targets, and his rejection of Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel landed him in trouble with then-president Anwar Sadat.

Sadat banished him to the Wadi el Natrun monastery north west of Cairo and stripped him of his temporal powers.

Under more than a quarter century of President Mubarak’s rule, relations between the government and the Coptic church were generally smooth, with the Pope portrayed in state media as a symbol of religious harmony, despite occasional outbreaks of sectarian violence.

On Saturday, condolences poured in from Egypt’s Muslim leaders and from politicians.

“Egypt has lost one of its rare men at a sensitive moment when it most needs the wisest of its wise – their expertise and their purity of minds,” said Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayib, grand imam of Egypt’s highest Islamic authority, al-Azhar.

“He held the question of Jerusalem and the Palestinian problem in his conscious,” the state Middle East news agency quoted him as saying.

Mohamed Mursi, chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said Pope Shenouda had a long journey of service during the nation’s history.

“The Freedom and Justice Party sends its deepest condolences to the Egyptian people and our Christian brothers over the death of Pope Shenouda III,” he said in statement on the website of the FJP, which took almost half the seats in Egypt’s new parliament.

Father Anglos Ishaq, head of the church on Egypt’s north coast, said a temporary replacement would be chosen until a new pope was elected.

“It is too early to know what will happen next, but what is known is that the oldest bishop in the Holy See will be chosen as charge d’affaires until a new pope gets chosen by elections from different church councils in the different provinces.”

He said the pope’s body was expected to remain in a coffin for three days, provided doctors gave their approval.

“All details about the burial and how long his body will remain for people to come and receive blessings will be decided by doctors,” Father Anglos said. “But surely people will get some time to see the body and receive blessings.”

(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh and Dina Zayed; Writing by Patrick Werr; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

And here I was, thinking it was Palpatine.

[Thanas]

Why the comment?

[Crateria]

Why the comment?

I assumed it would be Benedict because he was the only modern Pope besides Paul II that I knew about.

[Thanas]

Ah, didn't make the leap.

But this death couldn't have come at a worser time.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Why the comment?

I assumed it would be Benedict because he was the only modern Pope besides Paul II that I knew about.

There are at least four other Popes if I am not wrong.

[Simon_Jester]

Is it perhaps a good sign that the Muslim authorities are saying good things about him? That sounds more like the kind of thing they'd do when they're trying to signal their followers not to charge into a round of sectarian persecution, which would at least get one of the worries I've heard about post-revolution Egypt off the table.

[Thanas]

The situation sadly is still too volatile to come to that conclusion yet IMO.

[Skgoa]

Actually, this could be a massive boon to inter-faith relations if handled right.

Is it perhaps a good sign that the Muslim authorities are saying good things about him? That sounds more like the kind of thing they'd do when they're trying to signal their followers not to charge into a round of sectarian persecution, which would at least get one of the worries I've heard about post-revolution Egypt off the table.

Is it sectarian when it's about different religions?

Why the comment?

I assumed it would be Benedict because he was the only modern Pope besides Paul II that I knew about.

There are at least four other Popes if I am not wrong.

Really? I thought they are all called patriarchs.

[Siege]

As far as I'm aware there's three that have 'Pope' in their official title somewhere: the Roman-Catholic Pope, the Coptic Pope of Alexandria and the Greek Orthodox Pope of Alexandria. Well, plus a bunch of schismatic sects with their own Popes.

Egypt meanwhile is home to significant numbers of Coptic Orthodox, Coptic Catholic and Greek Orthodox (plus a bunch of other Catholic rites, plus the Protestants, but those three are the main ones). Shenouda lead the main chunk, the Coptic Orthodox, and he did maintain a good relationship Mubarak for a while because they both disliked political Islam. At the same time Christians were still marginalized from high official positions, university staff and so on, and Coptic Christians did join in with the revolution. So it's far from a clear-cut case of all of them being for or against the revolution.

Also, Shenouda's health had been failing for years. It's probably better the Coptics have someone who can actually speak for them instead of a deathly ill 88-year old. Although I wouldn't want to be his successor. That guy will have his work cut out for him.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Really? I thought they are all called patriarchs.

So's the Pope of Rome.

[Simon_Jester]

Is it perhaps a good sign that the Muslim authorities are saying good things about him? That sounds more like the kind of thing they'd do when they're trying to signal their followers not to charge into a round of sectarian persecution, which would at least get one of the worries I've heard about post-revolution Egypt off the table.

Is it sectarian when it's about different religions?

Beats me. Maybe not. I hope my meaning was clear, though.

[Ahriman238]

Wasn't it just last summer that an angry mob tore up one of the Coptic's main cathedrals in Cairo, because the Coptics were supposedly forcibly converting young women?

I'm starting to think this may not be their year.