Last Wednesday, Holy Mass was held in churches over Egypt to commemorate the 27 Copts who lost their lives a year ago in Maspero, Cairo, shot by security forces or crushed under military vehicles.
They had been among a several thousands strong peaceful demonstration of Copts protesting against the gross injustice of official inaction in the face of hardline Muslims attacking the Copts in Merinab, Aswan, and burning their church.
The acting patriarch Anba Pachomeus had declared Wednesday a Prayer Day during which all the Churches in Egypt would join in prayer for Egypt and its national unity, for the Coptic Church and a new pope to succeed Pope Shenouda III who died last March, and for commemorating the Maspero martyrs. The Maspero incident actually occurred on 9 October 2011, but the commemoration was held during the Prayer Day a week earlier since Anba Pachomeus, together with other members of the papal election committee, left Cairo on Thursday 4 October to the monastery of Anba Bishoi in the Western Desert. While in a two-week retreat, the committee is short-listing the 17 candidates for the papacy to seven or five candidates, among whom the Coptic Orthodox electoral college will elect by the end of November three names for a draw on the altar during Holy Mass on 2 December to name the new pope.
The Wednesday prayers were attended by Anba Yuhanna Qolta, Assistant to the Patriarch of the Coptic Catholic Church, Rev. Safwat El-Bayadi, Head of the Evangelical Community in Egypt, Rev. Mounir Hanna, Head of the Episcopal Church. Their congregations had also joined in the three-day fast.
Today, Sunday, the Maspero Youth Union—a union of young activist Copts which was formed in the wake of the Maspero massacre, and hence the name, to stive for full citizen rights for Copts—has planned for a march from the North Cairo district of Shubra to Maspero on the Nile bank in Cairo to commemorate the event. A procession bearing the pictures of the 27 who lost their lives last year will head the march, to funeral music played by a scout band.
WATANI International
7 October 2012