The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is being built some 15 km (9 miles) from Ethiopia's border with Sudan, has become a major source of discord between the three countries.

"I invite all parties involved to continue on the path of dialogue so that the eternal river will continue to be a source of life, which unites and does not divide, which nurtures friendship, prosperity and fraternity and not enmity, misunderstanding and conflict," the pontiff said. Read more

They have been waiting for nearly two years after legislation, seen by some as positive step for religious freedom in the Muslim-majority country, was passed. Read more

His distress was echoed by international religious and political leaders.

They included the Archbishop of Canterbury, President Donald Trump, the Turkish Foreign Ministry and French President Emmanuel Macron.

At least 109 people were wounded and 235 people died in the attack which plunged the nation into mourning.

The Pope's message was sent to Egypt by Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

It expressed Francis's solidarity with the Egyptian people and commended the victims to God's mercy.

Francis condemned the "wanton act of brutality directed at innocent civilians gathered in prayer".

He also said he "joins all people of good will in imploring that hearts hardened by hatred will learn to renounce the way of violence that leads to such great suffering, and embrace the way of peace."

This is the first major militant attack on a mosque, although Christian churches in Egypt have suffered murderous attacks during the past year.

Egyptian state news agency, MENA, says Friday's attack was the deadliest extremists have carried out in Egypt.

Most of those at the mosque were Sufis, who are members of Islam's mystical movement.

Although nobody has claimed responsibility for Friday's massacre, Islamic militants are suspected as being behind it since they often target Sufis.

They justify their attacks by saying Sufis are heretical because of their less literal interpretation of Islam.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi says the attack "will not go unpunished" and Egypt will persevere with its war on terrorism.

The suffering of the victims was not in vain, he added, and will only "add to our insistence" to combat extremists.

Security measures throughout Egypt are currently being reviewed.

Over the past year, militants have targeted people at prayer in Egypt.

They have carried out deadly bombings on churches in Cairo and other cities, killing dozens of Christians.

The Christian population in northern Sinai has decreased from about 5,000 in 2011 to fewer than 1,000, according to priests and residents.

Source

• Crux
• Daily Sabah World
• The Tablet
• Image: Zamal Al Wasl

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack which "riddled the bus" with machine gun fire.

Twenty eight people including children died in the attack. Another 22 were injured. At least one of the victims was visiting Egypt from the UK.

Pope Francis offered his prayers for the victims and their grieving families. He condemned the attack as "barbaric" and urged Egypt to join in reconciliation with the victims.

In his message to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Francis said he was "deeply saddened to learn of the barbaric attack in central Egypt and of the tragic loss of life and injury caused by this senseless act of hatred."

This is a "new crime added to the criminal record of a murderers' gang," Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group said.

It called for a "strong and frank stance in the face of terrorism that takes religion as a cover."

Hezbollah added that these acts of terrorism should be fought so the "world does not go toward a precipice to which those criminals want to take it".

This was the latest attack on Copts after Islamic State jihadists bombed three churches in December and April, killing dozens of Christians.

Source

• News24
• BBC News
• Image: Time Magazine

He said the attacks are part of the "war on infidels" IS is fighting.

He also claimed his group was responsible for the suicide bombings that struck two Coptic Christian churches on Palm Sunday. Forty-seven people died and many more were injured.

Speaking in an interview published in the IS al-Nabaa newsletter last week, the spokesperson urged all Muslims to work as jihadists.

They should focus on "legitimate targets" like churches and security posts, as well as "places where crusader nationals of western countries gather".

If Muslims don't join jihadist groups, they should carry out "lone wolf attacks," he said.

He also said Muslims who don't attack Christians are antagonistic to the Islamic religion, are apostate and had better "hurry up and repent".

Coptic Christians in Egypt have been targeted by IS jihadists for several decades.

The Palm Sunday attacks prompted Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to declare a state of emergency for the next three months.

Source

• ABC News
• Crux
• Image: Citizens

In it he recalled the various stages of his packed schedule, which included "dialogue between Christians and Muslims", the role of Christians in Egypt and meetings with many priests and religious. Read more
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He asked them to condemn violent extremism and "unmask violence that masquerades as purported sanctity." Read more

During his two-day visit he will celebrate Mass, participate in a peace conference, meet with the Orthodox Coptic Patriarch, Tawadros II and promote and deepen interreligious dialogue. Egypt is a predominantly Muslim nation. Read more

The Vatican has confirmed Francis will visit Egypt on 28 and 29 April.

He will visit to the Al-Azhar university and mosque in Cairo, widely considered the most significant center of learning in the Sunni Muslim world. Read more

Although Italy's state-run RAI reported Pope Francis would visit Cairo's Al-Azhar, the leading center of learning of Sunni Islam, on May 20-21, this has not been confirmed by the Vatican.

Instead, the Vaticvan says the trip is "under consideration but that no dates or itinerary have been finalized". Read more

The uncertainty about the actual number of Egyptian Christians adds to the malaise that the debate about national identity fuels amongst them.

An overestimate of the Coptic population often goes hand in hand with a sort of ethno-nationalism that rejects the "Arabness" of the Egyptian Christians, the latter being considered more authentically "Egyptian" than the country's Muslims.

In reality, the issue of the Coptic population's weight would be less thorny if citizenship were defined in terms of rights and duties.

In this extremely delicate moment of political and social transition while the debate about Egypt's identity is raging, however, the question of numbers becomes vital.

In any case, the Copts are unquestionably the most substantial Christian community in the Arab world today.

Less hit by the emigration phenomenon (2) than the other Christians in the Near East (at least until recently), the Copts constitute Christianity's most vital force and a presence that is decisive for its survival in the region that saw its birth.

Islamic identity and Coptic sub-citizenship

From the beginning of the 1970s onwards, Islamist rhetoric has taken advantage of the persisting poverty and inequalities in Egypt (aggravated by a predatory and dictatorial regime) to denounce the failure of imported models and call for an integral application of Islam's principles as the only road to national salvation. Islamist action has become manifest, in particular, in repeated acts of violence against the Copts. Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet, from an article by Christian Cannuyer, from the Catholic University of Louvain
• Image: Tampa Bay Times

The lineamenta for the Synod of Bishops' meeting in Rome in 2010 used the word several times. On June 23, 2011, the Holy Synod of Antioch (Greek Orthodox Patriarchate) called upon governments to secure "citizens' interests."

The notion of citizenship in these documents is not determined by ethnicity, linguistic grouping, confessional affiliation or the like.

In the present conflict in Egypt, reference to democracy is a dead end, since in different ways both sides are claiming—neither with overwhelming credibility—to be on the side of democracy.

Democracy in Egypt cannot work until a notion of citizenship is enshrined in law and practice.

For democracy to succeed in Egypt, all citizens—Muslims, Christians, secularists, moderates as well as the Muslim Brotherhood—must be guaranteed equal rights and obligations before the law.

When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia on Dec. 17, 2010, the Arab Spring began. Now, three years later, the results hoped for by people inside and outside the Middle East have clearly not been realised.

Iraq is still violently divided between Sunnis, Shiites and an increasingly autonomous Kurdish region.

Syria has sunk into a brutal civil war with over 110,000 casualties and 6.25 million citizens displaced to Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan or within Syria itself. Most recently, Egypt's experiment with democracy has at best been sidetracked. Continue reading.

Source: America Magazine

Image: BBC

Having crushed his internal opponents in May 1971, Sadat faced the overwhelming challenge of trying to find a way out of the predicament Egypt was in after its humiliating defeat by Israel in 1967. After some hesitation, he finally moved forward by launching an attack on Israel on 6 October 1973. The initial success of the Egyptian war effort gave the country a new sense of pride and its leader a much needed legitimacy.

While the Egyptian regime maintained its verbal commitment to Nasser's socialist policies, the reality was a state bureaucracy and services network that had lost all ability to deliver due to population growth. The state's withdrawal from its active duty meant the rise of alternative networks to provide for the needy in the fields of education, health and financial assistance. Inevitably what filled the gap left by the state were religious institutions. Both the church and the rising Islamists witnessed a wide expansion of their activities, ultimately replacing the state in providing for the people.

Sadat was no friend of democracy, but nonetheless he undertook opening up the political sphere. The one-party system was abolished and political parties were allowed. But ultimately, his most important domestic decision, a decision that would eventually cost him his life, was the freedom he gave to the formation of Islamist groups. In order to counter the prevailing Nasserist and leftist domination of university campuses, Sadat allowed, and in some cases encouraged, the growth of Islamist currents on campuses and eventually beyond. More religious and conservative than his predecessor, Sadat did not realize until it was too late that he had unleashed a storm that would destroy him.

Copts under threat

Under Sadat, religion was increasingly replacing nationalism as the foundation of the country; Christianity was ridiculed daily in the press. It was only inevitable that this would alienate Copts, who were increasingly fearful for their future. On university campuses, Islamist groups began targeting Christian students. Clashes soon took place. More violence became only a matter of time.

The focal point of some attacks was buildings that Christians used for prayer and that had not obtained the necessary government approval. On 6 November 1972, an attack took place in El Khanka on such a building. Angered, the recently enthroned Pope Shenouda III (r. 1971-2012) ordered some bishops and priests to march to the place and hold Mass. Such a march was viewed as a provocation by Muslims, and the building was attacked again. The parliamentary committee tasked with investigating the attack noted that out of 1,442 church buildings in Egypt only 500 had the necessary governmental approval. It also noted that in the ten-year period from 1962 to 1972, 127 permits were given to church buildings and that only 68 of these were for the Coptic Church. These 68 included only 22 new and 46 renovation permits. The committee recommended a government solution to the problem, but none was undertaken. Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion and Ethics
• Image: Front Page Mag

Tensions are still running high more than two weeks after the attacks in the city some 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Cairo but there have been no calls for vengeance, nor any fiery rhetoric.

"I say to the Islamists who attacked us that we are not afraid of their violence and their desire to exterminate the Copts," said Botros Fahim Awad Hanna, the archbishop of Minya.

"If we are not hitting back, it is not because we are afraid, but because we are sensible," he said.

Enraged by a bloody crackdown mid-August on protests in support of ousted president Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, Islamists lashed out at Coptic Christians in Minya, accusing them of backing the military that toppled the head of state.

The Copts, who account for some 10 million out of Egypt's population of 80 million, had already suffered persecution in recent years.

Meanwhile, Christians in Cairo told Catholic News Service the United States is taking the wrong side, with some, like 21-year-old Youssif, even accusing Washington of openly supporting terrorism.

Their concerns echo, almost to the word, Egypt's military and its new interim government's claims that Morsi was deposed by popular demand, that now-dismantled pro-Morsi camps in Cairo were armed, and that the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups with which Morsi was aligned are the ones behind a wave of attacks on state, security and Christian institutions around the country.

Obama has not termed the takeover a coup, though some U.S. lawmakers have. But Obama has condemned the forced dismantling of two pro-Morsi camps in Cairo Aug. 14, saying Washington supports "the right to peaceful protest."

Sources

AFP/Yahoo News

CNS/The Catholic Register

Huffington Post

Image: AFP/Yahoo News

They and other Christian leaders got on their phones and called their Muslim friends, neighbors and colleagues who all had the same message:

"They were told, 'Don't be afraid, we will guard your churches,' and that is what happened," said Sr. Darlene DeMong, a Canadian member of the Congregation of Notre Dame de Sion who has worked and lived in Egypt since 1978. She was in Berba at the time the warning came Aug. 16.

When she and two other sisters left the parish convent to stay with village families, "groups of (Muslim) village men showed up to guard it," DeMong told Catholic News Service Aug. 22.

The men positioned themselves in front of the Catholic church and its development center, as well as in front of Berba's other Christian facilities, DeMong said from the order's Cairo residence. She was set to fly from Egypt to Jordan with a novice Aug. 23 on a previously scheduled trip.

"The day went by peacefully and we returned home about 6 p.m., but the men stayed outside our house and in front of the church and the development center all night, and we had no problems, Alhamdulilah," DeMong said, using the Arabic for "praise be to God."

Egyptian human rights groups report that a growing number of Christian institutions are under attack in the general state of violence that has engulfed the country since early July, when Egypt's military overthrew the elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, following mass popular protests against him. Continue reading

The Islamists called for the reinstatement of Morsi, who is from the Muslim Brotherhood and was ousted by the military on July 3. Hundreds of Morsi's supporters were killed as police cleared the sit-in camps, and the others went on a rampage.

The Associated Press reported that the Islamists torched a Franciscan school in Bani Suef. The attack, supposedly to punish the school for giving an inappropriate education to Muslim children, lasted for six hours. The school has an equal number of Muslim and Christian pupils.

A mob of Islamists stormed the school, scaled the wall, looted money and valuables, vandalized the cross on the street gate and replace it with a black banner which looked like the flag of al-Qaeda, according to the school principal, Sister Manal.

"We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us," Sister Manal, who was with other staff, was quoted as saying. "At the end, they paraded us like prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to another without telling us where they were taking us," she said.

A former teacher of the school, who is Muslim, came to their help. "I remembered her, her name is Saadiyah. She offered to take us in and said she can protect us since her son-in-law was a policeman. We accepted her offer," Manal said.

Sources

Christian Post

Catholic World Report

Catholic News Service

Image: Catholic World Report

From an outsider's perspective the whole aim of rugby was to bring the game into disrepute. And the spectators seemed to relish its most disreputable features.

I can now see the point of the charge.

If suspicion persists that players were encouraged to take drugs whose long term effects are unknown, it would lead parents actively to discourage their children from playing the game at senior level, with incalculable commercial consequences.

Disrepute and disaster are twins.

Games are games. It is a much more serious and potentially dangerous thing to bring a nation's polity into disrepute.

And that sadly is what the military rulers of Egypt appear to have done when crushing the protests by the supporters of the elected and desposed President Mohamed Morsi. Over 400 people died, perhaps many more. Continue reading

Image: Eureka Street

In a Sunday service, the pope condemned religious extremism, stressing that faith and violence do not conform with each other.

"We continue to pray for peace in Egypt together, Mary Queen of Peace pray for us," Pope Francis said.

He also took the opportunity to condemn those who would resort to violence in the name of faith.

The pope focused on a passage of scripture that has, in the pontiff's words, "lead to confusion or misunderstanding."

The Christian text is Luke 12:51, which reads, "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!"

Pope Francis explained that the passage was intended to encourage Christians to place God in the center of their life and not just as a decoration.

Sources

Huffington Post

Egypt Independent

Patheos

Image: AFP/Huffington Post

"The provisions that in the old constitution seemed bad in the eyes of Christians are highlighted in the new text," said Kamal Fahim Awad (Boutros) Hanna of Minya.

He said the text says the interpretation of Sharia law should be in accordance with the body of laws developed in the early centuries of Islam, and an article on the rights of Christians and Jews has been eliminated.

Continue reading

"Most of the Christians do not want the president," said Father Rafic Greiche, the spokesman for the Greek Melkite Catholic Church in Egypt. "We have to be clear about this."

"Most of the Christians have felt during this year that nothing of his promises toward the Christians has been implemented," Father Greiche told Vatican Radio.

"And it is very important to know that this year nearly every day we have a sectarian problem: Burning churches, deporting people, and this big attack on the Copt Orthodox cathedral that happened two months ago."

The Christians who joined the protests said discrimination and violence against minority faiths had increased since Morsi took office at the head of a political party was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Coptic Pope Tawadros II gave his view in a tweet: "It's wonderful to see the Egyptian people — through the idea of Tamarod and its youth — taking back their stolen revolution in a peaceful way."

Tamarod is the protest group that led the campaign against Morsi.

Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak said "a year from the election of President Mohammed Morsi, we see the country going backwards, instead of forwards".

Last year, representatives of all the Christian churches resigned at the same time from the Constituent Assembly as a gesture of protest against attempts by Islamist forces to impose a Muslim identity on the country.

During the latest demonstrations, President Morsi tried to persuade Pope Tawadros to tell Coptics not to protest. So did the American ambassador, Anne Patterson. Pope Tawadros told them his spiritual authority over the Copts did not extend to political matters.

According to the Middle East News Agency, leaders from Egypt's Muslim and Christian communities will now meet with military leaders and opposition figures to discuss an end to the current political crisis and pave the way forward for Egypt.

Sources:

Vatican Radio

Catholic Online

Vatican Insider

Image: Hindustan Times