Anba Agapius, Bishop of Deir Muwass, whose parish was the scene of several attacks by the Islamists who support the ousted president Muhammad Mursi, told Watani that declarations attributed to him by Reuters were not true.
“I never talked to anyone at all from the media,” the Bishop said. “I never asked for international protection for Copts, since this is a principle which our Coptic Orthodox Church fully rejects.” The Church had always throughout its close to two millennia-long history been a national Church which derived its protection from God, not from any outside force.
Reuters had published a story on the Islamist attack against the 4th-century monastery of the Holy Virgin and Anba Abra’am in Dalga in Deir Muwass, Minya; in which words were attributed to Anba Agapius, which he says he never said.
Watani International
17 August 2013