Free Republic

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has appointed Coptic Christian judge Boulos Fahmy, currently vice-President of the same institution, as President of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt. The new President takes over from Judge Said Marei Amr, who resigned for health reasons, Republican decree n° 51 of 2022, signed by President al Sisi, establishes that the new holder of the post will assume full exercise of his functions starting from today, Wednesday, February 9. Boulos Fahmy, 65, is the first Coptic Christian to occupy the top position of the Constitutional Court since its creation. He...

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - In the intense urban development program launched in Egypt, each new urban district built in compliance with the guidelines established by the civil authorities will also have its own church, in accordance with the regulatory plan. This was confirmed by the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II, who, on Saturday, February 5, presided the celebrations for the inauguration of the new church built in El Salam City, an urban industrial and residential district that was built in recent years in the vast area of Cairo. The declared intent of the presidential provisions - Egyptian political analysts report...

Thousands of Christians have gathered in Jerusalem for an ancient fire ceremony that celebrates Jesus' resurrection. In a ritual dating back at least 1,200 years, they crowded Saturday into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected. During the annual ceremony, top Eastern Orthodox clerics enter the Edicule, the small chamber marking the site of Jesus' tomb. They then emerge to reveal candles said to be miraculously lit with "holy fire" as a message to the faithful from heaven. The details of the flame's source are a closely guarded secret. Roman...

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Palm Sunday, celebrated the day before yesterday by the Churches that follow the Julian calendar, saw an exponential increase of Egyptian Coptic pilgrims who have come to celebrate the rites of Holy Week in Jerusalem. According to the Egyptian media, in the current year already at least 5,700 Coptic Orthodox Christians have reached the Holy City, an increase of more than a thousand units compared to the Coptic pilgrims who had carried out a pilgrimage to the Holy Places of Jerusalem in 2015. The growing presence of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox in the Holy City marks...

Around 6,000 Egyptians, almost all of them Coptic Christians, have entered Israel to attend the annual Holy Fire ceremony at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Saturday. There has been a sharp rise recently in pilgrimages to Jerusalem by Egyptian Copts, after the Coptic patriarch, Pope Tawadros II, in effect rolled back a ban imposed by a predecessor in 1980, in the wake of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Tawadros himself visited Israel in November for the funeral of Archbishop Anba Abraham, the Coptic Orthodox Metropolitan Archbishop of Jerusalem and the Near East.
The accession of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi in June 2014...

An explosion near the Coptic Orthodox Church in Misrata late yesterday evening killed one Egyptian man and left another three injured. The explosion, reported to have been caused by a bomb, targeted a services building connected to the church in the city of Misrata, killing the Egyptian national and wounding three others at the same time. News broke this morning when the Egyptian embassy in Tripoli received a call from Bishop Timotheus Bishara Adla, head of the church in the Libyan captital, informing them that the church building in Misrata had been targeted by an explosion, Foreign Ministry spokesman Amru...

Concerned that Toronto Catholic schools will adopt a policy promoting tolerance of homosexuality, a Coptic Orthodox priest is calling upon parents to consider withdrawing their children from the schools. “In these young grades, we don’t want teachers talking about God creating Adam and Steve,” said Father Jeremiah Attaalla, who ministers at Ti Agia Maria and St. Demiana Coptic Orthodox Church in west Toronto. “It’s Adam and Eve.” “Our members do not want gay-straight alliance groups in our Catholic schools,” added the priest, who says that 4,000 Coptic Orthodox children attend the schools. “We will pull our children from the Catholic...

The faithful say she comes in a flash of light amid a swirl of pigeons. Hundreds, if not thousands, have been lining up for hours every night at the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in a Cairo neighborhood just off the Nile. Many of them claim that a mysterious light hovering above the church's domes is an apparition of the Virgin Mary who will bring Christian Copts prosperity and relief in a time of national and religious struggle. The crowds began appearing Thursday evening when a number of residents spotted a flickering light. No one was sure where the illumination was...