Egypt’s Christians to hold restrained Easter services in light of attacks

April 12, 2017 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Minya, Egypt, Apr 12, 2017 / 03:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After two bomb attacks on worshippers at Coptic Orthodox churches on Sunday, the Coptic Orthodox Archdiocese of Minya has announced it will celebrate Easter without the typical festive accoutrements.

The observance of Easter in the Minya Coptic Orthodox archdiocese will be limited to liturgical services “without any festive manifestations” in mourning for the nearly 45 Coptic Orthodox faithful who were killed in attacks on Sunday, the AP reports.

Two Coptic Orthodox churches were the targets of Islamic State bombings on April 9, Palm Sunday. The attack on St. George's in Tanta, nearly 60 miles north of Cairo, killed 28. Shortly after, another bomb went off outside St. Mark's cathedral in Alexandria, killing 17.

The attacks came only weeks before Pope Francis plans to visit Egypt to promote peace and dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the country. Pope Francis, after celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Square, decried the violence and asked God to “convert the hearts of those who sow fear, violence and death, and those who make and traffic arms.” He also expressed solidarity with Tawardos II, the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency following the attacks.

Sunday’s atrocities follow a months-long spike in anti-Christian violence in Egypt, particularly in the country’s Sinai region.

In December 2016, 29 died in a bombing of a chapel next to St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox cathedral in Cairo, for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Egyptian society was also profoundly shocked by the beheading in Libya of 20 Coptic Orthodox faithful and a companion by Islamic State militants in February 2015.

If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

Related Articles

No Picture
News Briefs

Pope Francis in Iraq meets with father whose children died as refugees in shipwreck

March 7, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Rome Newsroom, Mar 7, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis met Sunday with a father who lost his wife and two children in a shipwreck as Syrian war refugees.

Abdullah Kurdi was one of the thousands of people in the crowd at the pope’s stadium Mass in Erbil, Iraq on March 7.

The haunting photo of his son, Alan Kurdi, made headlines around the world in 2015. The photo showed the three-year-old’s tiny body laying face down on a Turkish beach after he drowned trying to cross the Aegean Sea.

Kurdi was one of only four people to survive after a dinghy carrying 16 refugees making the perilous journey from Turkey to the Greek Island of Kos capsized. His other son Ghalib and his wife, Rehanna, also died in the shipwreck.

During their encounter after the Mass in Erbil, Pope Francis told the father that the Lord participated in his suffering, according to a statement from the Holy See Press Office.

“The pope spent a long time with him and with the help of the interpreter he was able to listen to his father’s pain for the loss of his family and to express his profound participation and that of the Lord in the suffering of man,” it said.

 

A year on from Alan Kurdi, we continue to ignore future refugee crises https://t.co/Jegv1nPoKX pic.twitter.com/Ln1UXg5Tyz

— Brigitte Colman (@lakolman) September 1, 2016

 

Kurdi, a Syrian of Kurdish ethnicity, now lives in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region.

The Vatican said that the father thanked the pope for his words of closeness to his tragedy and to that of many migrants who risked their lives to leave their country.

Pope Francis is known for speaking out on behalf of the suffering of refugees. The week of the death of Kurdi’s family, the pope made an appeal to parishes and religious communities to welcome refugees in his Angelus address on Sept. 6, 2015.

“Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing death from war and hunger … the Gospel calls us, asks us to be close to the smallest and most abandoned,” Pope Francis said.

The pope also gave a statue depicting Kurdi’s young son to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters during a visit in 2017.

Kurdi set up a foundation with his sister Tima, the Alan and Ghalib Kurdi Foundation, which raises money in support of refugee children.

In past years, the two siblings spent the anniversary of the shipwreck distributing clothes and supplies to children living in refugee camps.


[…]

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*