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.