The year 2000 started in the worst way possible for Christians in Egypt. The violence between Copts and Muslims that erupted in the village of al-Kosheh, 440 kilometers south of Cairo, and spread in the following days to nearby villages, resulted in at least 25 dead, all of them Christians. This incident brings once more to the fore the tense relationship between Islam and Christianity in the land of the Nile, as well as the inadequacy of the preventive measures enacted by the government. And yet, ironically, when Kosheh was the site in the summer of 1998 of the murder of a Copt, the local police acted promptly to head off an explosion of inter-religious violence. How? By systematically torturing 1,200 Coptic civilians to obtain at all costs the "confession" of a murderer from the Coptic community itself.
As opposed to the other north African countries, where the Christian presence is limited, or practically so, to small communities of foreign workers, in Egypt Christianity is indigenous. What is more, the word "Copt" itself, by which the Arab conquerors designated the country's inhabitants and which indicates by now only the Christian faithful, is nothing other than the corruption of the Greek word aiguptioi, for Egyptians. Estimates vary as to the number of these faithful. Official statistics tend to minimize the size of the group (in the 1986 census the number of 3.3 million Christians was quoted), while the local churches, basing their count on baptismal records, speak of at least 10 million faithful. Most probably, the number is somewhere around 6 million, 10 percent of the 64 million inhabitants, of which Catholics are a small minority (300,000 following the Coptic rite, but also Melchites, Armenians, Maronites, and Latins), which means that in the Arab world, one out of every two Christians is Egyptian.

Crypto-faithful
At the root of these statistical disparities is also the presence of many crypto-Christians-faithful who, for reasons of social pressure, declare themselves to be Muslims. In a country where Islam is the State religion, the equality of "all citizens before the law without distinction of race, origin, language, religion, or creed" stipulated by the Constitution is often only theoretical. A Copt has difficulty reaching key positions. Rarely are Christians found in high public office, and in the army Coptic officers never rise above the rank of captain. Starting with the fifth grade in school, furthermore, all professors of Arabic (the sacred language of the Koran) must be Muslims. Being forbidden to seek proselytes among the Muslims, Christians also encounter numerous difficulties in building or restoring new churches. Ten conditions must be met to obtain the proper presidential authorization. One of these is that there be no mosques in the vicinity. The result is that long bureaucratic delays are used by fundamentalist groups to lay the foundations of a mosque right on the chosen spot, thus forcing the churches to run the risk of building without authorization.
The area of greatest Christian concentration is Upper Egypt (the southern part of the country), in particular the regions of Miniah, Assiut, Sohag, and Qena, where the percentage of Christians rises to 35%. Upper Egypt is also the area where the violent action of the fundamentalists of the Gamaa islamiya (who have killed more than 1,200 since 1992, including at least 130 Copts) has been concentrated. These attacks are usually directed against institutions of the State or foreigners, with the aim of jeopardizing the flux of tourists in a country whose primary resource is tourism. But they periodically involve the local Christians, as in 1997 when an Islamic commando killed 12 Copts inside the church in Abu Qorqas, in the province of Minya, followed three weeks later by another band's invasion of shops run by Copts in Nag Hammadi, shooting wildly and killing 9 Christians and 4 Muslims. Strict government control of funds arriving from outside the country has led some fundamentalist groups to rob banks and jewelry stores, often owned by Copts, in order to finance their "holy war."

Fundamentalist outbreaks
So then, to what point can the violence in Egypt be attributed to religious sources? Although many of the conflicts defined as "religious" in a rural area like Upper Egypt are instead the product of an archaic system of settling feuds, this does not, unfortunately, prevent us from noting how often an individual conflict is artfully exploited by fundamentalists to fuel a semi-collective outbreak of violence whose nature is decidedly religious. While limiting the social dimension, it is undeniable that harassment against Copts is increasingly frequent. According to the Egyptian Human Rights Organization, the fundamentalists of the Gamaa islamiya of Dairut "prevent Christians from their practice of worship" and impose under duress a levy on the commercial transactions carried out by Copts, "imposing corporal punishment on non-compliers."
Today, the name of Kosheh has become, after two outbreaks of violence, a synonym for enmity and has thus been changed by the government into "Village of Peace." But it makes no difference if the next outbreak is called "Kosheh 3" or "Village of Peace 1," given that the terrain is still fertile for something like this to happen.


Mark, Heretics, and Monks
BY GIUSEPPE FIDELIBUS

In a clearing overhanging the sea, outside the eastern city walls of Alexandria, Egypt, rises a small Christian church, the destination of very frequent pilgrimages from all the surrounding territory, dating from the fourth century onwards.
On June 13th of the year 313, in Nicomedia, the eastern capital of the Roman Empire, an edict was pronounced by the Emperors Constantine and Licinius recognizing Christianity as a religio licita (lawful cult) and the Church as a legal entity with the right to own property and to carry out social activities.
This fact brought about also in the Egyptian Church a great public reawakening of faith that found its focus in the small sanctuary of Bouculi (from the Greek word meaning "cowherd").
In that church were the jealously guarded mortal remains of the evangelist Mark, Peter's faithful disciple in Rome, the writer of the first Gospel, and the founder-according to tradition-of the Church in Alexandria, who died a martyr for the faith around the year 70 in the Egyptian city. In 303 Eusebius of Caesarea, the first historian of the Church, records, "It is said that Mark was the first to be sent into Egypt and that he preached there the Gospel that he had composed, and that he was the first to establish churches in Alexandria itself." (Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiastica II,16,1) He is echoed toward the end of the century by St. Jerome, "Taking with him the Gospel which he himself had written, Mark went to Egypt and laid a Church. He died in the eighth year of Nero's reign and was buried in Alexandria, where he was succeeded by Annianus." (Jerome, De viris illustribus VIII)
We do not have direct witness to the presence of Mark in Alexandria and of the Christian life led there until the second half of the second century. In that period (under Bishop Demetrius, 188-231), however, we already find a very lively Church, with a well-established ecclesiastical organization, and one which must thus have developed a good time before.
But it was above all a community of the Church established by Christ in which the two fundamental elements-charism and institution-intersect and find mutual renewal. The community depended upon the figures of great bishops (Peter during the persecution under Diocletian, 303-311; Alexander and Athanasius during the Arian controversy concerning the full divinity of the Eternal Word of God; Cyril during the one on the two natures, human and divine, contained in the person of Jesus Christ) who became authoritative reference points for all the Church, not only for that of Egypt.
The experience of Athanasius is emblematic. Exiled five times from Alexandria for the faith, he became the point of reference and defense for the universal Church in a period in which almost all the bishops went over to heresy. And this he did not by following some preconceived plan, but by cultivating friendships with the individual bishops he met in the Churches where he was exiled. These were the few bishops (the so-called "company of saints" as Hilary of Poitiers tells us in De Trinitate X, 4) who, not by chance, would remain faithful to the true faith during the most acute phase of the Arian persecution.
On the other hand Athanasius and his activity would be incomprehensible if not inserted into the spiritual substratum and the vocational community in which he lived and worked: the monastic movement which saw its origins arise precisely in the Egyptian desert (Anthony in the hermitic form, Pacomius in the community form.) Athanasius never became a monk but drew his spiritual and concrete strength from his friendship with the monks of the Thebaid.


Heirs of the Pharaohs
BY ALFIO PENNISI

Abou Korkas, Upper Egypt, a few hundred kilometers south of Cairo. The downtown area is large and heavily cemented over, but on the banks of the Nile time seems to have stood still, and many peasants still live in mud huts, watched over by indolent water buffaloes and dromedaries.
The school, one of the seventy run by the Upper Egypt Association, is surrounded by a whitewashed wall; inside, the courtyard is dusty, the classrooms are small and clogged by decrepit desks, the children countless and noisy as is always the case, and many of them have no shoes (nonetheless, a blue smock covers often torn clothing and somewhat evens out the inequalities). While Abdel Messieh, one of the teachers, shows us-with justifiable satisfaction-the children's math work (to teach multiplication tables and set theory, they use photocopies, even of foreign texts,) Amin Fahim, a Cairo lawyer of imposing statue and old-fashioned courtesy, President of the Association, recounts the origins, activity, and statistics of his work. He begins with a premise, "Saying Arab does not necessarily mean saying Muslim. We Christians made history in Egypt long before the advent of Islam, and we are the true descendants of the Pharaohs. My association is a small piece of this continuing history. It all began many years ago, almost sixty to be precise, at the hands of the Jesuits who started the first activities. Later, when under certain conditions the Jesuits were forced to pass things over to others, the Association became a laymen's initiative, while still maintaining its original purpose: to share man's needs in all their manifestations. Today, the elementary schools that we run number forty; the teachers, who work on a voluntary basis or with small public grants, number in the hundreds; and there are 15,000 students. And that's not all: besides the schools there are dispensaries, hospitals, programs for health education and support for women, workshops for job training, all operating in countless villages and cities from the outskirts of Cairo to the most distant parts of Upper Egypt." It would be a mistake to assume that the Association works only for Christians. "In all our activities," Fahim adds, "we never discriminate on the basis of faith, neither for those who take advantage of the services nor for those participating in making them work; Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims live daily side by side."
Do the Muslims also have initiatives of this kind, open to all? And what do they think of your work? Fahim skips over the first question with a smile and moves on to the second as we sip hot, strong tea. "The government appreciates us, to the point that it has recognized us as a public service organization. The common people as well trust us: some time ago, in a village not far from here, a group of fundamentalists attacked a church, and many Muslim families moved temporarily into our houses to protect us. The risk of fundamentalism is always lurking in the background; the extremists are the most suspicious of us. And they sometimes have support which is seemingly above suspicion…." Fahim does not want to say more, and he narrows his keen eyes, wise with the experience of a thousand years. Then he changes his mind and continues, "Our Christian communities, as I was saying, have ancient roots, and we cannot let them disappear. At stake is not only our survival as Christians, but the possibility itself for peace and free co-existence in the Mediterranean."
Rabbena maak, may God be with you, Mr. Fahim!

John Paul II's Pilgrimage
From February 24th to the 26th John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Egypt, to Mount Sinai, to the sites of salvation. The following texts have been excerpted from the Pope's homilies at Cairo
"Out of Egypt have I called my son." (Mt 2:15)
Today's Gospel recalls the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt where they came to seek refuge. In this way, Christ too, "who became man so that man could receive the divinity" (S. Athanasius of Alexandria, Contra Arianos, 2:59), wished to retrace the journey which was that of the divine call, the route which His people had taken so that all the members of the people could become sons and daughters in the Son. (...)
Jesus, the Lamb of God, too, was called out of Egypt by the Father to fulfill in Jerusalem the Passover of the new and irrevocable covenant, the definitive Passover, which gives salvation to the world. (...)
While Christians are celebrating the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of Jesus, we must make this pilgrimage to the places that saw the beginning and unfolding of the history of salvation, the history of the irrevocable love between God and men, the Lord's presence in time and in human lives. We have come to Egypt, on the path upon which God guided his people, with Moses as their leader, to bring them into the Promised Land. (...)
How beautiful is this covenant! It shows that God does not stop speaking to man in order to give Him life in abundance. It places us in the presence of God and is the expression of His profound love for His people. It invites man to turn to God, to allow himself to be touched by God's love and to fulfill the desire for happiness that he bears within himself.
(L'Osservatore Romano, February 26, 2000)

Egypt has been home to the Church from the beginning. Founded upon the apostolic preaching and authority of Saint Mark, the Church of Alexandria soon became one of the leading communities in the early Christian world. Venerable bishops like Saint Athanasius and Saint Cyril bore witness to faith in the Triune God and in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, as defined by the first Ecumenical Councils. It was in the desert of Egypt that monastic life originated, in both its solitary and communal forms, under the spiritual fatherhood of Saint Anthony and Saint Pachomius. Thanks to them and to the great impact of their spiritual writings, monastic life became part of our common heritage.... I repeat what I wrote in my encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint, that whatever relates to the unity of all Christian communities clearly forms part of the concerns of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. (cf. No. 95) (...)
May the Spirit of God soon grant us the complete and visible unity for which we yearn! ... [And] may the third Christian millennium be the millennium of our full unity in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
(L'Osservatore Romano, February 27, 2000)

Christianity : Facts and Places
BY VITTORIO MESSORI

This making of pilgrimages to places of the faith is a way of opposing the temptation-which is always there, but is current now more than ever-to consider Judeo-Christianity as a doctrine, a knowledge, a morality. In reality, at the origin of the faith there are events, facts, and thus there are places. It is no coincidence that Christianity defines itself as "the History of Salvation," a history rooted completely in human history. The Incarnation of God, the basis of the Creed, does not allow the Christian to pray to an only transcendent God, one only in Heaven, but to a Creator who-with concrete facts-has sanctified in particular certain places in His creation. Where these places actually are is a matter for archaeologists to establish. What is important today is to attract to them, wherever they are, the attention of believers who are inclined to see the Scriptures as a treatise on spirituality. On the contrary, they are the matter of flesh, blood, earth, stones, mountains, rivers, deserts.
(Corriere della sera, February 27, 2000)