Pope Tawadros visits Pope Francis next May: Visit of Firsts

Pope Tawadros II is scheduled to be in Rome during 9 – 14 May 2023 on an official visit to the Vatican.

The news was first posted on 20 April by Aleteia on its website aleteia.org. Aleteia describes itself as an online publication launched in 2013; distributed in six languages: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish and Slovenian; and offering a Christian vision of the world by providing general and religious content free from ideological influences. It is a lay Catholic media outlet, but works closely with Catholic Church organisations.

Firsts

The day following Pope Tawadros’s arrival to Rome will be 10 May, a Wednesday, the day of the weekly general audience of Pope Francis. Aleteia wrote that Pope Tawadros will be appearing alongside Pope Francis at the general audience at St Peter’s Square that day, where he will speak. It will be the first time another Pope speaks with Pope Francis at a general audience; in 2008, Armenian Catholicos Karekin II was with Pope Benedict XVI but did not speak.

On 14 May, Pope Tawadros is scheduled to offer Coptic Orthodox Divine Liturgy in the Catholic Archbasilica of St John Lateran in Rome, another first: a non-Catholic celebrating Mass in the Pope’s cathedral.

Father Martin Browne, an official at the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, talked to the National Catholic Register on April 21 saying that “the Liturgy has been arranged following appropriate consultation. The Catholic Church recognises the Orthodox Church’s sacraments as valid, even if still in schism.

“Pope Tawadros will celebrate at a specially constructed altar, not the main altar of the basilica. The Liturgy will be for the Coptic faithful in Italy.

“The visit of their patriarch is a very important event for Copts in Italy and very many of the faithful are expected to attend. Up to 3,000 are expected, which is far more than could be accommodated in Pope Tawadros’s own [Coptic Orthodox] church in Rome.”

Dominican priest Fr Hyacinthe Destivelle, a member of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, explained to Aleteia that talks between the two Popes are expected to focus on the theme of the ecumenism of blood. “The Coptic Church,” he said, “is often called the Church of the Martyrs. The memory of the 21 Coptic martyrs beheaded by the Islamic State (IS) in Libya in February 2015 may be evoked.”.

Marking previous visits

Pope Tawadros’s upcoming visit to the Vatican will mark ten years on his first meeting with Pope Francis in Rome, and 50 years on the first meeting between a Catholic Pope, Paul VI, and a Coptic Orthodox Patriarch, Pope Shenouda III, since the great schism that divided the Churches at Chalcedon in 451. Pope Tawadros II also met Pope Francis during a visit to Cairo in 2017.

In the 1973 visit, Pope Paul VI and Pope Shenouda III made history when they signed a joint declaration acknowledging their shared faith in Jesus Christ, “perfect God with respect to his divinity, perfect man with respect to his humanity.”

Warm relations

Fr Destivelle talked on how the relation between the Catholic and Coptic Orthodox Churches developed in modern times following some 1500 years of schism in the wake of the Chalcedon council.

Fr Destivelle said that relations between the two Churches had begun to warm with the Second Vatican Council, where Coptic observers were present. In 1968, Pope Kyrillos invited Pope Paul VI to Cairo for the inauguration of the new Coptic cathedral. Paul VI could not go, but on that occasion he returned relics of Saint Mark which had been taken from the Copts in the 9th century by Venetian merchants. This gesture marked a new era in the relationship between the two Churches.

In 1973, Fr Destivelle continued, the Catholic Church was celebrating the 1600th anniversary of the death of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, and Paul VI invited the young Patriarch Shenouda III to Rome. They signed a Christological agreement which put an end to the controversy born around the Council of Chalcedon and which had led to a rupture between Rome and many Eastern Churches, including the Coptic. This joint declaration of 1973 underlined that the faithful indeed shared the same faith in Christ, true God and true man. This historic agreement then served as a model for other Churches such as the Syriac, Armenian, Syro-Malankara, etc.

Fr Destivelle reminded that when Pope Tawadros II became patriarch in November 2012, he chose that his first trip outside Egypt would be to Rome to meet Pope Francis who had just been elected. They celebrated the 40th anniversary of the famous meeting between Pope Paul VI and Pope Shenouda III and declared that May 10 would be “Coptic-Catholic Friendship Day” which has since been celebrated every year with an exchange of messages.

On baptism

In 2017, Fr Destivelle explained, Pope Francis went to Cairo and signed with Pope Tawadros II a common document with a pastoral tone. One of the challenges was to agree on the question of the recognition of baptisms, particularly in the case of mixed marriages. The declaration assured that the two Churches “will strive diligently and in integrity towards refraining from the re-baptism that had been administered in either of our Churches for any person who wishes to join the other.”

At home too

In Egypt too, Fr Destivelle said, relations between the Coptic Catholic and the Coptic Orthodox faithful are positive. “Pope Tawadros has done much for Christian relations in Egypt since the beginning of his patriarchy. His Church represents around 10 per cent of the Egyptian population, that is some 10 million faithful. It is the largest in the Middle East numerically speaking. But that doesn’t stop him from working for dialogue between Christians. He instituted an Ecumenical Council of Churches with a rotating presidency. Likewise, he was present at the enthronement of Catholic Patriarch Sidrak in 2013, which had never been done before. This shows his openness towards the Catholic Copts who number only a few hundred thousand.”