Pope Urges Christian Unity at Historic Cairo Mass

Nearly 20,000 Egyptians welcomed Pope John Paul II on Friday with fluttering handkerchiefs and banners in five languages at the first papal Mass in Egypt and applauded his appeal to reunify their Christian churches and overcome religious discrimination in this mostly Muslim country.

“All citizens have a duty to play an active part, in a spirit of solidarity, in the building of society,” he told the worshipers in Cairo. “It is right that everyone, Christians and Muslims, while respecting different religious views, should place their skills at the service of the nation, at every level.”

Some Muslims and Orthodox Coptic Christians joined the Roman Catholic service at an indoor sports arena. They mixed easily with one another and with Catholics in a display of the tolerance prevailing in much of the country despite pervasive favoritism of Muslims and occasional outbursts of sectarian bloodshed.

“We’re all people of faith. We’re all brothers, and we came here to support each other,” said Yousra, a Muslim who is one of Egypt’s leading actresses. She said she had begged an invitation to the Mass from an ailing Catholic friend because “this kind of thing happens just once in a lifetime.”

Egypt’s state television carried the Mass live, answering criticism that it usually ignores Christians and their culture. John Paul read his homily in French from a gilt, throne-like chair, clutching the text in hands that quivered from Parkinson’s disease. Some readings were in Arabic and in the ancient Coptic language, while welcome banners in Italian, English, French, Arabic and Polish hung from balconies.

“I was really moved,” Fouad Naguib, a pediatrician who is Orthodox Copt, said after attending the service with his wife, Mary, a Catholic. “The Mass was celebrated in so many languages and with such beautiful music, and it brought together so many Christians. You can see the unity.”

John Paul’s three-day visit to Egypt is focused mainly on a pilgrimage to Mt. Sinai today to retrace Moses’ footsteps. He has used his two days in Cairo to campaign against modern religious tensions.

Christians, whose faith came to Egypt with St. Mark a few years after Jesus’ death, make up about 10% of Egypt’s 67 million people. They complain of laws restricting their right to build churches and of pro-Muslim bias in media coverage, politics and public employment. Last month, 20 Christians and one Muslim were killed in three days of sectarian strife in a remote village in upper Egypt.

The pope also is troubled by a breakdown of efforts to reunite Egypt’s largest Christian community, numbering about 6 million Orthodox Copts, with the Catholic Church, whose 222,000 followers here could squeeze into St. Peter’s Square in Rome.

At an ecumenical gathering Friday evening at the Catholics’ new Our Lady of Egypt cathedral, John Paul addressed Catholics and Copts as members of one church that “in Egypt has undergone heavy sacrifices and continues to do so.”

Appealing to a common heritage that includes the earliest Christian monasteries and persecution by 3rd century Roman invaders, he called for a revival of long-abandoned talks between Vatican and Coptic leaders that would try to “leave useless controversies behind” and achieve “complete and visible unity” under Vatican authority.

The Coptic leader, Pope Shenouda III, kissed John Paul on both cheeks and said, “We love you,” but he did not answer his appeal. A Vatican official is due to return here next month for another try.

During intermittent talks that spanned 19 years and broke down in 1992, the two churches agreed to avoid trying to convert each other’s members and to respect each other’s differing sacramental rites and clerical traditions. Copts allow their priests to marry; Catholics don’t.

Copts have accused Catholics of breaking the accord by proselytizing. Catholic officials say a big obstacle to new talks is the Coptic church’s recent insistence that Catholics who marry Copts should be rebaptized as Copts.

Coptic leaders say rebaptism is needed because in Egypt all mixed marriages, including Catholic-Copt marriages, are subject to Islamic law, while marriages within a Christian church are not. Catholics say rebaptism is unnecessary because Islamic law is rarely applied to such marriages.

John Paul’s failure to bring Orthodox Christians back into his flock on a larger scale has been one of the disappointments of his 21-year papacy. At Friday’s ecumenical service, he suggested that rank-and-file faithful of the two Egyptian churches could move closer together by holding joint prayer services and joint fasts. “There is no time to lose!” he said.

Some Catholics here would disagree with that approach.

“All Christians in Egypt feel Christian more than separate,” said Father Emilio Platti, a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium who serves in Egypt. “The problem is at the level of church authority and church law.”

Friday’s Mass was a demonstration of how intermingled Catholics and Orthodox faithful are in Egypt.

Salwa Kamal, an Orthodox Copt from Cairo, came to the Mass with her three young children, who are Catholic. Samia Sarhan Zakaria, a 25-year-old Catholic from Alexandria, the seaside Mediterranean city where Christianity began in Egypt, attended with an Orthodox cousin, Regina Ibrahim, 14.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Zakaria said of the pope’s coming, “like a gift from God.”