Last week, two churches in Egypt were subject to demonstrations by Muslim hardliners who prevented Coptic Christians from worshiping, claiming the churches are unlicensed. In a third incident, a police officer broke onto a church and screamed at the worshippers “Infidels … you are all infidels.”
Egyptian authorities have arrested four men and two women suspected to be members of a terrorist cell behind a failed suicide attack on a church in Qalubiya governorate, the interior ministry said in a statement last Sunday.
To be a woman in a country where most of her people see women as a disgrace, and at best look at her from a sexual point of view, it is a heavy burden, but even worse when you are a Christian woman. It is hell!
The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the Nov. 24 bombing of a mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai region, calling it a “monstrous terrorist attack on innocent people at prayer.”
Christians in Egypt “are getting to this idea that we could be a martyr at any moment,” the spokesman for the nation’s Catholic bishops told Catholic News Service.
Pope Francis’ historic, 27-hour visit to Cairo has left a profound mark on Egyptians, Catholic leaders said, as they anticipate increased ties with fellow Orthodox Christians and Muslims.
Pope Francis has just completed his Apostolic Journey to Egypt. By all standards, it was widlly successful. The very fact that it even occurred immediately makes it a success.
Pope Francis’ April 28-29 trip to Egypt was full of ironies, among them a Catholic pope being received as a hero in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, and the fact that one of the world’s most spontaneous and people-loving figures spent most of his time surrounded by a thick security cocoon enforced by the Egyptian military and security services.
During his two-day trip to Egypt, Pope Francis met with Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II and lit a candle outside St. Peter’s Church, Cairo; spoke at an international conference on peace; met Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and government officials; and celebrated Mass for the faithful.
Placing flowers, lighting a candle and praying at the site where Coptic Orthodox Christians were killed by an Islamic State militant last year, Pope Francis and Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II paid homage to those killed for their faith.
