“Dear friend and brother Tawadros, I thank you for accepting my invitation to this double anniversary (…) I sincerely thank you for your commitment to the growing friendship between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church,” said Francis.
Pope Francis celebrated the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Pope, Tawadros II, during a meeting in the Vatican, in a milestone in the relations between the two Churches. The four-day visit, at the invitation of Pope Francis, coincides with the 50th anniversary of the meeting between Pope Paul VI and Shenouda III, the Coptic Orthodox Pope, in 1973.
The Argentine Jesuit warmly kissed the Pope of the Copts, in reference to the friendship that binds them, before allowing him to speak first before the thousands of faithful gathered, like every Wednesday, in St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
Francis said, “Dear friend and brother Tawadros, I thank you for accepting my invitation to this double anniversary (…) I sincerely thank you for your commitment to the growing friendship between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.”
This is the third meeting between the two religious leaders after the first visit of the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church to Rome in 2013 and a visit by the Pope in 2017 during his visit to Egypt.
On this occasion, they signed a joint declaration in which they reaffirmed the bonds of “fraternity and friendship”, despite the separation between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Copts make up between 10 and 15 percent of the hundred million Egyptians, and they are the largest religious minority in the Middle East, according to differing estimates of the authorities and the church. There are no official statistics for the number of Copts in Egypt.
