Vandalized statue of Sacred Heart of Jesus returns to Texas cathedral

Baltimore, Md., Jun 10, 2019 / 11:00 pm (CNA).- Several bishops and other Church leaders have said they will return money given to them by retired West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield, who is accused of serially sexually harassing or coercing semina… […]

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.

[…]

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 28, 2020 / 04:47 pm (CNA).- The bishops of the United States have called for increased protections and support for farm workers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

An April 29 statement from the U.S. bishops’ coference, co-signed by four bishops, advocated that employers of migrant and farm workers, as well as public health officials, acknowledge that “all workers need access to free testing and care related to the COVID-19 virus.”

The bishops called for renewed commitments from employers to ensure that housing and transportation provided for farm workers is safe and compliant with Centers for Disease Control guidelines, that information on health and hygiene practices is “easily accessible in multiple languages” and that workers be given any appropriate personal protective equipment. 

The statement was signed by Archbishop Nelson Perez of Philadelphia, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Cultural Diversity; Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima, who leads the Subcommittee on Pastoral Care of Migrants, Refugees and Travelers (PCMRT); Bishop Oscar Cantu of San Jose, the PCMRT’s episcopal liaison for migrant farmworker ministry; and Bishop Mario Dorsonville, an auxiliary bishop of Washington and leader of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration.

The statement also noted the need for emergency plans, establishing protocols for when a worker is diagnosed with COVID-10. 

“To defeat the virus, no one must be left out,” said the bishops. “The COVID-19 virus teaches us we are one human family, says the Holy Father. ‘We can only get out of this situation together, as a whole humanity.’”

The bishops said it was essential to “honor the dignity of farmworkers and make sure that they are paid a livable wage as well as be eligible for other benefits to help protect their health and the health and safety of their families at this time.” 

Bishop Tyson told CNA on Tuesday that the safety of migrant workers is especially important in his own diocese, where much of the population and economy is connected to the agricultural industry. 

“We’re hoping that [these suggestions] are principles that will guide all the stakeholders –whether that’s ranchers, orchardists […] owners of the packing plants, government officials, health department people” Tyson told CNA in an interview.

“We’re just offering those as principles for all of the stakeholders, regardless of how they’re involved in the agricultural industry,” he added. 

Tyson told CNA that the statement was “just at the beginning” of a process of developing policy suggestions. He said he and his brother bishops were “trying to be proactive” with their recommendations and best serve the migrant farmworker population, which swells during the state’s bigger harvesting seasons. 

The Diocese of Yakima, where Tyson has been a bishop since 2011, grows by one-third each summer as migrant workers come to work in the area. More than 62% of his diocesan population are considered “essential workers” during summer months, meaning they are at increased risk of contracting the virus as they continue to work ensuring the country’s food supply. 

“We are very concerned that our workers, our parishioners, our fellow Catholics, have the protection they need in order to do their essential work in the fields” said Tyson. “They are the ones harvesting the fruit, cutting the asparagus, pulling the apples off the trees and sorting them.”

Tyson told CNA that there are “many” employers, ranchers, and orchardists who are working to provide equipment to their workers, for which he is grateful. He said that he hopes these policies will become more widespread across the agricultural industry.

“This is all very real to us,” explained Tyson. “It’s a real key issue, our own folks, here.”

[…]