Egypt - the Living Stones, the Coptic monasteries
86 images Created 13 Dec 2008
“If the monasteries are strong, the Faith is strong”, it’a popular way of thinking for the Egyptian Coptics, the biggest Christian minority of the Middle East who account for one-tenth of the country’s 92 million people. After the visit of the Catholic Pope the skepticism of the majority of many Egyptians Christians has not changed. The Egypt’s strongman, the president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, officially shows up as strong defender of the Copts but the majority of them has lost faith in a country that swings between apathy and discrimination against them. Last year a church-building law discriminates against Christians, in many small towns and villages of the Central Egypt Islamist radicals often insult the Christian and burn churches.
So still today these monasteries are true strongholds of a faith and a story begun when St Mark arrived here in A.D. 64. Between the walls of convents often isolated between deserts and mountains, rituals and stories similar to legends lost in time survive and in these places regain the strenght of a living reality. In the middle of the Egyptian desert, in Deir al Qaddis Antwan where St. Antony in the Desert in the fourth Century built the first monastery of the Christian history, in the Coptic monasteries of Wadi al-Natrun, or in the old churches of Old Cairo. In Nile’s Delta politically sensitive area the Coptics pilgrims flock to the great Moulid of St Damiana, one of the most important Coptic feasts between el Mansoura and Damietta (really difficult to have the permits for a foreigner), not far from Tanta where a recent terrorist attack stroke the local Coptic church.
So still today these monasteries are true strongholds of a faith and a story begun when St Mark arrived here in A.D. 64. Between the walls of convents often isolated between deserts and mountains, rituals and stories similar to legends lost in time survive and in these places regain the strenght of a living reality. In the middle of the Egyptian desert, in Deir al Qaddis Antwan where St. Antony in the Desert in the fourth Century built the first monastery of the Christian history, in the Coptic monasteries of Wadi al-Natrun, or in the old churches of Old Cairo. In Nile’s Delta politically sensitive area the Coptics pilgrims flock to the great Moulid of St Damiana, one of the most important Coptic feasts between el Mansoura and Damietta (really difficult to have the permits for a foreigner), not far from Tanta where a recent terrorist attack stroke the local Coptic church.
