Coptic Pope Brings Call for Peace : Religion: The problem of a Palestinian homeland is among leader’s concerns on his Southland tour. He will also dedicate a monastery and consecrate a church.

When Southern California’s 25,000 Coptic Orthodox Christians say “Pope” they mean Shenouda III, not John Paul II, and church headquarters is in Cairo rather than Rome.

As part of a pastoral visit to North America’s 200,000 Coptic faithful in 41 churches, Pope Shenouda is in Los Angeles this week, speaking, meeting with religious and civic dignitaries, consecrating a new church and dedicating the first Coptic monastery in the United States, near Barstow.

Outside of New York, the largest U.S. community of Coptic Orthodox believers is in Southern California, where 10 of the churches are located, all established since 1970. Worldwide, the Coptic Orthodox, who are descendants of the ancient pharaohs of Egypt, number about 28 million. Most live in Egypt, Ethiopia and the Middle East.

“My message to the American government,” the bearded patriarch said Tuesday at a press conference, “is to work for peace and justice in the Middle East and Lebanon, and especially to solve the problem of the Palestinians.”

Later, Shenouda called it “inhuman that a nation live homeless, so we always ask that Palestinians should have a homeland. But this is a work of the men of politics, not our work.”

The 66-year-old spiritual leader, clad in a black robe trimmed with gold braid and carrying a gold-tipped pastoral staff, added that his message to the U.S. churches is “to care for youth . . . and children from the beginning of life.”

Shenouda is considered the 117th successor to the Evangelist Mark, who tradition says founded the Christian Church in First-Century Alexandria, Egypt. Roman Catholicism traces its lineage to the Apostle Peter in Jerusalem about AD 34.

Shenouda’s church is part of the Oriental Orthodox communion that split with Rome in 451. The controversy centered on the formula of the Council of Chalcedon, which defines the way the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ are to be understood.

Shenouda, who speaks English, Arabic, Coptic and French, has been a pioneer in seeking theological glasnost between the two communions ever since he became the Coptic Pope in 1971. He was chosen in a ceremony in which the names of three candidates were written on slips of paper and put in a silver box; he was selected after his name was drawn three times by three blindfolded boys.

In 1973, Shenouda met with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in the first encounter between the heads of the two churches since the Fifth-Century schism. The two signed a declaration affirming that their faiths are essentially one although disagreements remain over dogma.

“We are still discussing theological differences,” Shenouda said Tuesday. “I meet with Catholic leaders everywhere. . . . We are trying to go as far as we can for Christian unity, for unity was the desire of our Lord.”

This is Shenouda’s second trip to the United States. In 1977, he came for six weeks in the first visit ever to this country by a Coptic Pope. His current 11-week visit began in Boston on Sept. 6.

The growth of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United States has been dramatic. Since the early 1970s, tens of thousands of Copts have emigrated, seeking economic opportunity and religious freedom unhampered by the restrictions many Christians face in Egypt’s Muslim society.

Twenty Coptic churches have been established in the United States since 1985, Shenouda said, “and we could establish 20 more.”

In addition to formally consecrating St. Mary’s Church in Highland Park on Sunday, Shenouda will visit congregations in Orange, Riverside and Ventura counties. On Monday, he will dedicate the chapel at St. Antonious Coptic Orthodox Monastery, 25 miles northeast of Barstow.

The ceremony will take place even though the U.S. Army wants the land the monastery is on for expansion of its Ft. Irwin National Training Center. A final decision on the Copts’ request to keep the desert property must be processed through the Army, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the secretaries of defense and the interior--and finally, the Congress, according to monastery spokesman Khalil Khalil.

“We will discuss this. . . . We can solve the problem,” Shenouda said confidently.

The monastery location was chosen because of its resemblance to a Coptic monastery site in Egypt. The Coptic Church of Alexandria was the source of the Christian monastic movement, which began at the end of the Third Century and flourished during the Fourth Century. St. Anthony, said to be the world’s first monk, was a Copt from Upper Egypt.

Shenouda, a monk for eight years, lived from 1956 to 1962 in the seclusion of a desert cave, existing on bread and water and devoting himself to “solitude, prayer and contemplation,” he said.

Included in Pope Shenouda’s public appearances this week are a Town Hall speech at the Los Angeles Hilton at noon Thursday and a lecture at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Mudd Auditorium on a visit to the Claremont Graduate School’s Institute for Antiquity and Christianity.

Shenouda will leave for Australia on Nov. 15 before returning to Egypt by Christmas.

COPTIC POPE’S ITINERARY WEDNESDAY, NOV. 1:

Private meeting with California priests

THURSDAY, NOV. 2:

12 to 2 p.m.--Town Hall, Los Angeles Hilton

7:30 p.m.--His Holiness’ lecture at Claremont School of Theology. Subject: Coptic Orthodox Church through the ages

SUNDAY, NOV. 5:

Liturgy and consecration of St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church, (the first church to be built in the Western U.S. according to Coptic Orthodox tradition), in Highland Park

MONDAY, NOV. 6:

Visit to St. Anthony Coptic Orthodox monastery near Barstow

FRIDAY, NOV. 10:

Meeting for all Church members at St. Mary Church

MONDAY, NOV. 13:

Private meeting with the priests of the U.S. and Canada. Opening of first College of Theology in California at St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in West Los Angeles

TUESDAY, NOV. 14:

7 p.m.--Banquet at the Bonaventure Hotel

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 15:

Departure for Australia