The Franciscan School in Beni Sweif, 100km south of Cairo, which was looted and burned by the Islamist Muslim Brothers (MB) in 2013, has reopened after rebuilding and furnishing by the Egyptian Armed Forces.
On 14 August 2013, the MB and their supporters had gone on a nationwide plundering and torching spree that targeted some 100 Christian churches and establishments in Egypt to avenge the overthrow of the MB regime of former President Muhammad Mursi some five weeks earlier. That overthrow was the outcome of the 33-million-strong mass revolution by the Egyptian public against Mursi and his regime; the military responded by removing Mursi on 3 July 2013, following which his supporters waged a war of terror against Egyptians, especially Copts. The Islamists held violent sit-ins in two Cairo squares to protest the toppling of Mursi; when finally the police broke up the sit-ins on 14 August, the MB retaliated by their infamous attack against churches and Coptic-owned community centres, schools, homes, businesses, property no matter how small, and even an orphanage. The Armed Forces had promised to help rebuild what was destroyed, and has been slowly doing so, the Franciscan School being the most recent case. The losses of the school had been estimated at some EGP16 million.
Last Sunday saw Major General Taher Abdullah, deputy to the Defence Minster, joined Beni Sweif Governor Madgy al-Bateeti; regional head of the Franciscan Sister Missionaries, Sister Angelina; and the school head Sister Manal Fayeq in officially opening the school. The students and pupils held their own festivities to honour the day.
Established in 1899, the Franciscan School is the oldest in Beni Sweif governorate, and has a brilliant reputation for exceptional educational and scholastic achievement.
Watani International
23 December 2014