In deadly CAR conflict, Catholic seminary shelters 2,000 Muslims

Saint Macarius Monastery in Egypt’s Beheira governorate, November 2010. / Berthold Werner via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Alexandria, Egypt, May 10, 2021 / 18:01 pm (CNA).

Wael Saad, a former monk of the Coptic Orthodox Church, was executed on Sunday for the 2018 murder of Bishop Epiphanius, the abbot of St. Macarius Monastery.

Saad’s brother told Reuters the family was told to receive his body from a morgue in Damanhour, 40 miles southeast of Alexandria, May 9.

Raymond Rasmi Mansour, another monk who assisted in the crime, has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Mansour had also been sentenced to death, but his sentence was reduced after winning an appeal.

Bishop Epiphanius’ body was found July 29, 2018, with injuries to his head and back that suggest that he had been hit by a sharp object. 

Saad, whose monastic name was Isaiah al-Makary, was charged with the bishop’s murder Aug. 11, 2018, and confessed to the murder the following day. Saad said that Mansour, whose monastic name was Faltaous al-Makary, assisted in the crime. Mansour attempted suicide in August 2018.

Saad was expelled from the monastery Aug. 5, 2018 for “inappropriate actions which violate monastic behavior and way of life.” The Coptic Orthodox Church said that his dismissal had been decided on before the bishop’s death.

The bishop’s murder highlighted tension in the Coptic Orthodox Church over monasticism, ecumenism, and reform, and led to the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate issuing several decrees on monasticism.

The Coptic Orthodox Church is an Oriental Orthodox Church, meaning it rejected the 451 Council of Chalcedon, and its followers had historically been considered monophysites – those who believe Christ has only one nature – by Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.

Tawadros II, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, announced Aug. 1, 2018 that the Church’s monasteries would stop accepting new brothers for one year. Those who established monasteries unapproved by the patriarchate were to be stripped of their priesthood and monastic state. No new monasteries could be founded except as a revival of old monasteries, and this was to be done under the care of a recognized monastery.

The Church also instructed its monks to close their social media accounts, and suspended the ordination of monks for three years. Permissions for monks to attend outside functions was also restricted.

Later that month the Church announced that unrecognized monasteries would have one month to submit to the supervision of the patriarchate. 

Samuel Tadros, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the New York Times that Bishop Epiphanius was “a senior figure in a reformist Coptic movement” that has been favored under Tawadros.

“His appointment, in May, to position in which he would work as a liaison with the Catholic Church was seen as a sign that conservatives were being sidelined, Mr. Tadros said.”

Pope Francis visited Egypt in 2017, and signed a joint declaration with Tawadros announcing that their Churches would recognize the validity of each other’s baptisms.

Previously, the Coptic Orthodox Church had repeated baptism if a Catholic had sought to join it.

Conservative members of the Coptic Orthodox Church have reportedly resisted such reforms under Tawadros. According to a commentary by Engy Magdy in the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn’s The Tablet, these conservatives are associated with Shenouda III, the immediate predecessor of Tawadros as Coptic Orthodox Patriarch.

The dispute goes back to tensions between Shenouda and Fr. Matta El Meskeen.

Fr. Matta was tasked by Cyril VI in 1969 with reviving monastic life at St. Macarius Monastery. The monk was focused on the spiritual life, openness to the thought of other Churches, and ressourcement.

While Shenouda was a disciple of Fr. Matta early on, after he was elected Pope of Alexandria in 1971 the two came into conflict. Shenouda restricted Fr. Matta to his monastery, and discouraged the reading of his books, according to an essay by Mina Thabet in Middle East Eye.

It was during this time, in 1984, that Epiphanius joined St. Macarius and became a monk. Epiphanius was a disciple of Fr. Matta, and was involved in ecumenism.

St. Macarius Monastery was long independent of the Coptic Orthodox hierarchy, but Shenouda restored it under the Church’s authority in 2009, and appointed some 70 conservative monks, among them Saad and Mansour.

In the year after Shenouda’s 2012 death, Epiphanius was elected abbot of St. Macarius, and consecrated a bishop.

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CNA Staff, Mar 11, 2021 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Christians will struggle to remain in the Holy Land without financial help from Catholics worldwide on Good Friday, a Vatican cardinal said on Thursday.

In a letter issued March 11, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri e… […]

CNA Staff, May 27, 2020 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- The Catholic bishops of Burundi have denounced the country’s recent general elections, and alleged irregularities in the voting process earlier this month.

The president of the Burundi Conference of Catholic Bishops (BCCB) issued a statement on Tuesday following the victory of Evariste Ndayishimiye, former secretary-general of the country’s ruling party, the CNDD-FDD.

“We deplore many irregularities with regard to the freedom and transparency of the electoral process as well as fairness in the treatment of certain candidates and voters,” said Bishop Joachim Ntahondereye of Muyinga after results were announced, according to AFP.

On Monday, the electoral commission declared Ndayishimiye the winner of the country’s May 20 election. He received 68.72% of the votes, more than double the opposition’s leader, Agathon Rwasa, who received 24.19%.

The opposing party, the National Council for Liberty (CNL), called the process “an electoral masquerade” and promised to appeal to the Constitutional Court this week. If the opposition’s appeal is rejected, Ndayishimiye will be sworn into office in August.

“In the face of these and other irregularities, we wonder whether they do not prejudice the (final) results to be proclaimed by the Constitutional Court on 4 June,” the bishops asked, according to Africa News.

The bishops have been outspoken before. In 2019, they alleged that minority parties were being “suffocated” ahead of the presidential election.

In response, government officials called for their laicization.

“Some bishops should be defrocked because it is becoming a habit: on the eve of elections they spit their venomous hatred through incendiary messages,” said presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe on Twitter.

Burundi is a landlocked East African country of almost 12 million. It has faced near constant political turmoil since the 1970s, and has been the place of two different genocides.

The Burundi bishops said their election observers noted, among other unfair actions, the ruling party engaged in electoral fraud, coercion, and intimidation. The government has been accused of detaining or ejecting CNL officials from the polls. Further, no foreign observers were permitted into the country to help supervise a fair election.

The Catholic Church “deplores in particular the coercion exercised on certain proxies to sign in advance the counting of the contents of the ballot boxes, the stuffing of some ballot boxes, the voting in place of deceased and refugees, multiple and therefore invalid proxies, the fact that there were in some polling stations voters who voted more than once,” the bishops said, according to Africa News.

The bishops also condemned “the exclusion of proxies and observers from the places where the votes are counted, the intimidation and coercion of some voters by administrative officials who accompanied them to the polling booths, the intrusion of unauthorised persons into the counting stations.”

The Church deployed 2,716 observers to overview the polling stations. While the number of observers was fewer than the number of stations, they were able to analyze polling stations in all of Burundi’s 119 municipalities.

Outgoing President Pierre Nkurunziza, who has ruled the country since 2005, applauded the victory of his party.

His final term in office was strongly opposed by the U.S., U.K., opposing parties, and Burundi bishops. His 2015 decision to seek a third term triggered violence in the country that left at least 1,200 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Last year, the bishops emphasized the administration’s political violence and warned that the Imbonerakure – the youth wing of the ruling party – had replaced security forces in the country.

In response, the government said that some bishops should be defrocked and claimed that these men were spitting “venomous hatred through incendiary messages,” according to a tweet from presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe.

Following the country’s turmoil in 2015, Pope Francis encouraged prayers for the country and the victims of violence.

“I also wish to invite you to pray for the dear people of Burundi, who are living in a delicate moment,” the Pope said in his May 17 address ahead of the Regina Caeli prayers.

“May the Lord help everyone flee the violence and act responsibly for the good of the country.”

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