Pope Shenouda III

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Pope Shenouda III

Egyptian Copt Christians gathered on Sunday to pay final respects to Pope Shenouda III, who had died on March 17. Tens of thousands lined up at the cathedral where Shenouda’s body was initially laid in a coffin and then seated on a throne, wearing all ceremonial religious vestments, a golden mitre and a golden-topped staff.

Filed Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who is still in power after the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak, promised to air lift Shenouda’s body to where he will be buried. Barack Obama, the president of the United States, offered condolences, while Pope Benedict XVI, the leader of all Roman Catholics, prayed for Shenouda and expressed “strongest feelings of fraternal compassion” to the clerics and the Holy Synod of the Egyptian Patriarchate.

The Roman Pope said that Shenouda was a promoter of the brotherhood between Christian churches, and therefore his church felt the affliction of the Orthodox Copts. Some of the Christian activists often complained that he did not do enough to promote the interests of the Christians.

Shenouda was often quoted to say that “Egypt is not a nation we live in, but rather a nation that lives in us.” He will be buried at Wadi al Natrun monastery, in the desert northwest of Cairo.

He was sent to this monastery in the days of Anwar al Sadat, after criticizing the way the government handled an Islamic insurgency in the 1970s, and the peace with Israel in 1979.

During Mubarak’s rule, the late pope was seen as a symbol of religious harmony, although some outbreaks of sectarian violence existed even then.

In his address, president Obama said that he would remember Shenouda as a man of deep faith, a leader of a great faith, and an advocate for reconciliation and unity. He added that the former Patriarch and Pope was a beloved leader in Egypt and an advocate for tolerance and religious dialogue.

He is known for his backing of the embattled president Mubarak before he was toppled by the popular movement of 2011. This drew him some amount of criticism. Other religious leaders in the country did the same thing.

For the next two months, the throne of the Patriarch and Pope of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church will be held by Bishop Bakhomious, from the Church of Bahaira, in the Nile Delta.

The election of the new pope is based on the vote of the church’s city councils, which vote on three candidates, after which the names of the three are being placed into a box, and then a child picks up the winning name.

Shenouda III died on Saturday at the age of 88. He is said to have died of old age. He became the Patriarch of Alexandria in 1971, and is the 117th head of the Egyptian church.

His name was Nazeer Gayed Roufail, and was born on August 3, 1923, in Asyut, Upper Egypt, as the youngest of eight candidates. He graduated at Cairo University with a degree in history, and then attended classes at the Coptic Theological Seminary by night.

He joined the monastic life at Scetes, one of the oldest and most famous Christian monastic communities in the entire history of Christendom. He there received the name Antonios el-Syriani, Antony the Syrian. He spent time at Scetes dedicating himself to meditation, asceticism, and prayer.

In 1959 he was among the candidates to the patriarchal throne of Alexandria, but the elected patriarch was Cyril VI. In 1962 the patriarch appointed him as Dean of the Coptic Theological Seminary. On that occasion he was consecrated as Bishop under the name Shenouda.

In this new role, he became a supporter of the “campaign of change,” which brought him suspension in 1966. The campaign was promoting the idea of choosing the bishops and priests by election. When he became pope, he followed this principle.

He had controversial stances on the peace with Israel, in 1979, when he said that Egypt, as an Arab nation, should not abandon the Palestinians. When the Marxist regime in Ethiopia arrested and imprisoned Abuna Tewophilos, the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, he refused to recognize his successor.

The demise of the pope of Alexandria was also mourned by Islamic leaders in Egypt: Sheikh Amhed al-Tayib, grand imam of Cairo, said Egypt lost a rare man at a sensitive moment, when it needs the wisest of the wise.

Condolences were offered by the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, Freedom and Justice party. Mohamed Mursi said that Shenouda III arrived at the end of a long journey of duty.

Egyptian Copts are a tenth of the population of the country, and have had a strained relation with the Muslims over the past years, when violent acts were committed against them.

In 2011, the Muslim intellectuals came to the church of Alexandria to create a human shield against radical Islamists in an attempt to protect them after a violent explosion before Christmas.

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