Copts’ spiritual leader to be selected, by ballot, on Sunday

THE Coptic Orthodox community in Egypt will learn on Sunday who will succeed Pope Shenouda III, who died in March, aged 88, after serving as the community's spiritual leader for four decades. The new pope, the 118th, will take office at a time when the Copts have never felt less certain about their future, and when Islamists hold power in post-revolutionary Egypt.

The process of choosing a successor began on Monday when about 2400 Coptic clerics, community leaders, and church notables each selected three candidates. When all the votes had been counted, it emerged that the three with most support were Bishop Roufail, Bishop Tawadrous, and Fr Rafael Ava Mina. On Sunday, in Abbassiya Cathedral, Cairo, each name will be written on a piece of paper. Then, following an ancient tradition, a blindfolded child will select the winner.

The new pope will have the difficult task of trying to steady the nerves of the eight million or so Copts, most of whom feel uneasy at the recent turn of political events in Egypt. Although Christians stood side by side with Muslims in the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, the country has since become largely split, with Islamists on one side, and secularists and Christians on the other.

As a columnist for the newspaper Al-Ahram, Makram Muhammad Ahmad, wrote earlier this week, Egypt is experiencing "a sharp state of polarization dividing the society into advocates of a religious versus a civil state, and the absence of healthy dialogue on outstanding issues".

The concerns of Christians have been exacerbated by both the electoral success of the Muslim Brotherhood and the increasing assertiveness of Salafists. While President Mohammed Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders have assured Christians that their rights will be respected, acts of violence against Coptic targets have continued, and there has been a rise in the number of incidents where women without their heads covered have received verbal abuse on the streets.

Many Copts believe that the Islamists' long-term agenda is to see Egypt become an Islamic state, in which non-Muslims will be, at best, second-class citizens. In these circumstances, there seems little hope that the Copts' demands - including the right to build new churches - will be met.

The new pope will also face the question how to respond to the younger generation of Copts who reject the Church's traditional policy of keeping a low profile and refraining from open political activity. Pope Shenouda, despite his charismatic personality, frowned on those members of his community who sought political platforms to demand an end to discrimination against the community. In the wake of recent attacks on Coptic targets, there have been calls for the creation of political parties specifically to defend Christians' rights.

Although Copts continue to complain of discrimination, the Islamist-dominated government has taken at least one step to ease sectarian tension: it is allowing quotations from the Bible to be included with those from the Qur'an in the secondary-school curriculum, provided that the former do not contradict Islamic principles.

The Copts will also take some comfort from the fact that the state-run Nile TV beamed live broadcasts of the preliminary voting for the new pope on Monday. In contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood's Misr 25 TV mentioned the ballot only in passing.