WATANI International
26 September 2010
A long journey of faith
St Mary’s Church in Faggala is one of the oldest churches in Cairo. “I used to visit when I was a young man,” Pope Shenouda III told the congregation in a sermon he gave on a visit to the church on 27 December 1998. “This church has raised several well-known fathers such as Anba Athanasius, Bishop of Beni Sweif and creator of the Sunday schools in this church in the late 1940s, and Anba Antonius, the general bishop of Africa, as well as many others. It always has been a fruitful church. May God bless every effort made on behalf of this church.”
These words of His Holiness are used again in the introduction by Anba You’annis, bishop-general and secretary to Pope Shenouda III, to the book, St Mary of Faggala: A Journey of 125 Years, published by the church at the end of 2009. The book reviews the history of the church in 400 pages of yellowish paper which give the reader a sense of the old times, richly illustrated with old pictures as well as photographs of the architecture and icons of the church.
Gem of Cairo
St Mary’s dates back 125 years ago, when the flow of the River Nile took it past the church. But the district of Faggala is much older; in the Fatimid era—during the 10th and 11th centuries—Faggala was the gem of Cairo, the place of entertainment by the Fatimid rulers, who planted gardens and built palaces there. It was then known as the Land of the Tabbala (meaning the ground of the drummers). But Faggala was given its current name because its land was famous for figl, Arabic for radishes.
When Khedive Ismaïl ascended the throne of Egypt in 1863, he dreamt of turning Cairo into the ‘Paris of the Orient’. As part of his vision he ordered the removal of all the ponds and hills in Faggala, and divided the land by straight boulevards which turned the city into the stately urban region which is the basis of today’s district.
Faggala celebrities
Also in Khedive Ismaïl’s time, many wealthy Copts bought land in Faggala on which the palaces of that earlier era lay in ruins. One of the famous families that moved in was the Gad Shiha al-Ghamrawi family, who built St Mary’s Church in 1884. By then the number of Coptic families in the area had greatly increased. The idea of building this church to absorb the region’s Copts was the brainchild of Dimian Bey Gad, who was an accountant at the Finance Ministry, and his brother Wassef Effendi. Dimian died before the project saw light, but his brother, Mikhail Bey Gad, took charge of the church project and succeeded in obtaining an official decree to establish it in 1884, during the reign of Khedive Tawfiq.
Another famous family residing in Faggala was that of Egypt’s then Prime Minister Boutros Ghali, and it was the birthplace of his grandchild Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the secretary-general of United Nations from 1992 till 1996.
Faggala Street is now named Kamel Sidqi Street in honour of Kamel Sidqi Pasha (1890–1946), president of the Lawyers’ Syndicate and Finance Minister in 1944.
Proud donations
The church building project was approved by Pope Kirollos V, who expressed his pride in the list of iktitab (doantions) for the new church by the neighbourhood Copts. Mikhail Gad donated more than half of the costs. The first phase—which included the altar, church yard, and western part reserved for women—cost EGP2,000, a princely sum at the time.
Several other Coptic families made contributions in kind, helping with the building process, painting icons, or working with the Italian artist-in-residence who was painting the icons. Fr Mittias Farid mentioned that the church furniture was made by the Coptic Industrial School.
The first prayers in the church were conducted in September 1884.
The Church was totally restored under the late Father Abdel-Messih Mikhail (1887 – 1959) in 1921, and again in September 1946; following the earthquake in 1992; and lastly in 2009, when the altar was restored to match the church’s style and history.
Contributing to Sunday School and October War
In the second half of the 19th century religious teaching in churches had become fragmentary, and there was a need for men whose hearts were filled with faith and concern for the history of the Orthodox Church. One of these was Habib Girgis, who in 1900 took it upon himself to found the Devotion Association, which was designed to serve young Copts and teach the Christian religion in governmental schools.
In 1905 Mr Girgis devoted every Thursday to teaching religious classes in St Mary’s Church. These later became known as Sunday Schools.
The prominent figures who grew up under the wings of St Mary’s Church and had an influence on the Coptic Church and the Egyptian community are many. Among them were Fr Abdel-Messih Mikhail, curator of the Coptic Museum; Deacon Henry Boutros, one of the founders of the Holy Bible Society; and engineer Baqi Zaki Youssef, whose role was pivotal in the October 1973 War between Egypt and Israel. The Egyptian army then managed to cross the Suez Canal and land in Sinai only after destroying the dust embankment known as the Bar Lev Line, which worked as the Israeli first line of defence in Sinai. It was Youssef’s idea to use water canons to break the Bar Lev barrier, which the Egyptian army successfully did.