Back from Cairo, Gregorios III
says, “We are living God’s today.”
H.B. Gregorios III, Patriarch of
Antioch and All the East, of Alexandria and of Jerusalem, is back from Cairo,
where, as usual, he spent the Feasts of the Nativity and Epiphany. Asked about
the current state of affairs in Egypt just one year after
the start of the Tahrir Square uprising, the Patriarch remarked that the
situation seems calm, with “enough security to allow more or less normal life
to go on, though there is still a sense of unease.”
“Life goes on in our schools,
institutions, parish centres, but we have to realise and accept that a new wave
of departures is hitting our Egyptian Melkite Greek Catholic community. We
really deplore the departure of some twenty families, according to the
testimony of our parish priests, as this is a significant number for a
community already reduced to barely five thousand people,” added Gregorios III,
before explaining, “This wave of departure is also hitting Coptic Catholic and
Orthodox communities, and it would seem that there have been Muslims leaving
too. But it is impossible to be sure and difficult to know how many. They have
numbers on their side, so leavers don’t create such a void as among Christian
communities.”
“We are living God’s today from
one day to the next. We are keeping our little flock, loving and serving it
through our pastoral care, our schools and each one of our institutions.
Pastoral care, together with our schools, is most important, as it is the
foundation of our Church’s life,” the Patriarch asserted, when questioned about
the future of the Church in Egypt, for which he “could make no forecast, as the
sense of uncertainty is so great, and repeated, “We are living God’s today.”
The Melkite Greek Catholic
Patriarch’s annual visit to his Alexandrian see is always filled with meetings,
pastoral visits and talks with the heads of other Churches and with Muslim or
political authorities. This year, given the prevalent state of affairs in the
area, Gregorios III’s visits and trips
were less tightly packed than in previous years. He went to Alexandria and
Tanta, but had to cut out the traditional visit to Mansurah, for example.
Gregorios III took part in the
Coptic Christmas celebrations and greeted Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Shenouda
and Coptic Catholic Patriarch, Cardinal Antonios (Naguib). He took part both in
the annual meeting of the Assembly of Catholic Hierarchy in Egypt, chaired by
the Coptic Catholic Patriarch and in the setting up of an ecumenical Christian
assembly for Egypt, to promote better co-operation and visibility of Egypt’s
Churches. The first meeting of this new Council should take place on 21 February.
Two other meetings marked this
stay: one with the Shaykh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb and the other with the Secretary
General of the Arab League Nabil Al-Arabi.
Grégorios III hailed the
publication by Al-Azhar of three papers on Egypt’s future, especially the one
of 8 January, 2012, which declares that Egypt is a Christian and Muslim
country, in which “freedom of belief, opinion and expression, and liberty of
academic research and creation are guaranteed,” as the paper puts it. The
Patriarch was happy to note that his repeated calls to listen people who took
to the streets, and understand their slogans and appeals had been correctly
understood in the Al Azhar statements. On
the other hand, he hoped that now that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists
were in power and the new Parliament has started legislating, they will take a
more moderate line.
In his talks with Nabil Al-Arabi,
the Patriarch repeated his request for a regional Muslim-Christian summit, with
the aim of creating an institution, a permanent secretariat, which, in the
guise of a standing council, would work in tandem and close collaboration with
the Arab League. The idea and concept were welcomed by the Secretary General of
the Arab League and Nabil al-Arabi promised to think about it.
Rabweh, 27 January 2012