Anba Dumadius, Bishop of 6th of October City and its Affiliate Districts, and also Head of the Coptic Orthodox Synod’s Prisons Commission, celebrated Resurrection Mass on the evening of Saturday 4 May at the Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility [Prison] at Wadi al-Natroun, some 100km northwest Cairo in the Western Desert.
Participating with the Bishop were priests and deacons from the 6th of October Diocese.
The Interior Ministry, to which the prison is affiliated, issued a statement stating that the Wadi Natroun Correctional Facility “had received a number of Christian clerics to perform prayers and religious rituals to celebrate the Glorious Feast of the Resurrection with the inmates of the prison, men and women.
“The prison authority presented the inmates with gifts and kahk [traditional Egyptian sugar-coated cookies made especially to celebrate feasts] specially made for them by the Ministry’s Societal Protection Sector.”
For his part, Anba Dumadius thanked the Interior Ministry for arranging to hold regular Masses in all Egypt’s prisons. For the first time, he said, a church was built in a prison; that being the Wadi Natroun correctional facility.
Anba Dumadius explained that the Coptic Church assigns a priest to serve the inmates of every prison; it also serves, supports, and cares for the prisoners’ families.