Pave Johannes Paul II besøker historiens første land

Christian Minority: Direct Descendants of Pharaohs

VATICAN CITY, FEB 22 (ZENIT).- Despite its claims, France is not the "first-born daughter of the Church." Historically, this claim actually belongs to Egypt, the first Christian country in history.

The expression "first-born daughter of the Church," was used because the Gauls were the first nation to convert to Christianity in 495, when King Clovis and 30,000 of his warriors embraced the faith. However, a century earlier, Christianity was already the religion of Egypt - 99.9% of Egyptians converted easily, in spite of the terrible mass martyrdoms that Christians suffered during emperor Diocletian's reign.

Given this reality, when John Paul II travels to Egypt this Thursday - where he will visit Cairo and Mount Sinai, where God revealed his name to Moses: "I am Who am," the Pope will not be arriving in a country where Christians are foreigners. On the contrary, Egyptian Christians are the authentic descendants of the pharaohs. Indeed, the name "Copts," as Christians are known in this land, designates the way in which Arabs refer to Egyptians: "Qubt," a contraction of the Greek "Aigyptos."

Origin of Monasticism The Church in Alexandria was founded by the evangelist St. Mark around the year 40. At the end of the 1st century, 20% of the Egyptian population was Christian. By the 2nd century, they constituted 45% of the population, and included distinguished intellectuals like St. Clement and Origen, who were leaders of the Alexandrian theological school. Several edicts were published during the 3rd century, banning Christianity from the land. From 303 to 305, Diocletian organized a bloody persecution that ended in thousands of martyrdoms. The Coptic calendar dates its first year as 284, when Diocletian came to power.

As usually happens, the blood of martyrs became the seed of new Christians. During the 4th century, Egypt became the land that witnessed the birth of the first Christian monks in history. The cradle of the hermitic life was the Egyptian desert of the 3rd century. According to St. Jerome's writings, Paul of Thebes - known as Paul the Hermit, was the founder of the hermitic way of life. The first hermit on whom there is considerable information was St. Anthony of the Desert (250-356), whose biography, "Vita Antonii," was written by St. Athanasius, a text which in no time became a primer of monasticism and spirituality, and had much influence on the Fathers of the Church, including St. Augustine, and contributed to the growth of monasticism.

After Christians suffered great upheavals, especially in 389, Theodosius promulgated an edict in 392, which made Christianity the state religion and closed pagan temples.

In 451, following the Council of Chalcedon, the Church in Alexandria was divided. This date marks the birth of the Coptic Monophysite Church - to which the majority of Egyptian Christians belong. A minority - the "Chalcedonites" remained faithful to Rome. Today's Coptic Orthodox, the heirs of this split, explain that they never actually held the Monophysite heresy (that Christ had no human nature - only divine). Instead, they held (and hold) that the human and divine natures of Christ combined to form one "Christ nature."

The Arab-Muslim conquest of Egypt, which took place between 639 and 642, found Christians divided into 3 million Copts and 200,000 Chalcedonites. Since then, there has been a very complex coexistence between Muslims and Christians. Between 829 and 831, several monasteries were destroyed because of Christians' dissatisfaction with tax regulations. The Fatimid dynasty of the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries included several Christian Ministers, although the reign of Caliph al-Hakim (996-1021) was darkened by the destruction of churches. The year 1219 is of special interest, because it records St. Francis of Assisi's meeting with Sultan Ayubida al-Kamel.

Christians did not enjoy juridical and fiscal equality until 1866. And in 1908 - for the first time in history - a Copt was head of government. Christians were marginalized once again following Nasser's revolution; he imposed a unified program of religious teaching in all schools. Since 1992 the Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists have carried out repeated bloody attacks against the Christian community.

At present, official statistics tend to minimize the number of Christians. The 1986 census recorded a total of 3.3 million, but the local churches, which base their information on baptismal records, report a figure closer to 10 million faithful. In part the difference is due to the fact that in Egypt there is a large number of crypto-Christians - faithful who because of social pressures, declare themselves Muslims. Today Christians probably number 6 million, or 10% of the 64 million inhabitants. This means that one out of every two Eastern Christians has Egyptian nationality.

In a country where Islam is the state religion, Copts have difficulty in obtaining key positions in society. Rarely are Copts found in important political posts. Over recent years, the Coptic Churches have tenaciously opposed the government in this area, but the latter has been pressured by fundamentalists to adopt Islamic laws, including the amputation of hands for theft and the death penalty for apostasy of Islam.

The geographic areas of Christian concentration are Upper Egypt (the southern part of the country), where the Christian population reaches 35%, as well as the outskirts of Cairo and Alexandria.

At present the Coptic Orthodox Church embraces 93% of Egyptian Christians. Their leader is Pope Shenouda III, 117th successor of St. Mark, who was exiled to a monastery in 1981 by President Sadat, where he remained in "guarded liberty" until 1985. He has made a great effort to encourage the rebirth of Egyptian monasticism and favor ecumenical dialogue. He met Pope Paul VI in 1973.

The Catholic Coptic Church is one of the smallest Catholic communities in the East. The patriarchy was born officially in 1895, although since 1741 Apostolic Vicars have succeeded one another to lead the few thousand Copts who have converted to Catholicism. Today the Church has some 200,000 faithful and, since 1986, is led by Patriarch Stephanos II Ghattas. Since 1959, the Brothers of St. Mark's Preaching - of Dominican inspiration - have played a special role, as has a Coptic branch of the Franciscans.

In addition to these two Churches, Egypt has communities of Latin Catholics (150 male religious, including Jesuits, Salesians, and Christian Brothers, and 800 women, especially of the Combonian Congregation. The Greek-Catholic Church has some 9,000 members of Syrian, Lebanese, or Palestinian origin, and the Maronite Church includes faithful of Lebanese origin who arrived in Egypt in the 19th century because of the religious freedom the country enjoyed.

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