Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria:POPE SHENOUDA III of Alexandria, who has died aged 88 after suffering from prostate cancer, was for four decades the spiritual leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the largest Christian community in the Middle East. In his native Egypt he was patriarch to seven to 11 million Copts – the government of the predominantly Muslim country giving a lower estimate than the church – and another four million worldwide.
Coptic congregants, worshipping in a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of Christianity, held “Baba Shenouda” in high regard. Yet his pontifical reign was marked by controversy. While inter-communal strife saw thousands of Copts leave Egypt, critics blamed him for politicising his office and exacerbating matters, either through over-assertiveness or timidity. Egypt’s 2011 uprising threw such tensions into starker relief.
Ten years into his papacy, Shenouda had famously fallen out with president Anwar Sadat; in September 1981 he was summarily dethroned and banished to an ancient desert monastery. Reinstated by Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, in January 1985, the Coptic pope, 117th in a line of leaders that began with St Mark, achieved considerable successes. The ordination of deaconesses was resumed after an interval of several centuries, and he brought women into theological colleges and councils, though he was against them becoming priests.
Shenouda also represented Coptic lay and political interests in Egypt and fostered ties with wealthier Coptic diasporas in the US, Canada, Europe, South Africa and Australia.
However, he was beset by problems in his final years and past troubles came back to haunt him, too. In 1976 he dismissed a rebellious deacon, Max Michel, who in 2005 was declared a bishop by an Orthodox organisation in Nebraska, and the following year crowned himself Archbishop Maximus I, head of a rival St Athanasius Church. Michel claimed God had deserted Shenouda’s congregation and that more than a million Copts had become Muslims or evangelical Christians. While Michel attracted little support, he caused much rancour.
Shenouda developed a close working relationship with Mubarak. Initially he discouraged Copts from taking part in the demonstrations that led to Mubarak’s overthrow in February 2011.
Faced with January 2012’s elections to a parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and conservative Islamists, many Copts supported the liberal, secular Muslim-Christian Egyptian Bloc, which achieved fourth place. Others formed Coptic parties, a move Shenouda had resisted.
He was born Nazir Gayed, the youngest of eight children in Asyut, southern Egypt, moved to Cairo at 16 and served as a novice at St Anthony’s Church school. In 1947, he gained a BA in history from Cairo University, fought as an officer in the Arab-Israeli war the following year and then taught English in a high school.
In 1949, he graduated from the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary. Four years later, he began teaching at the Monastic School in Helwan and became professor of Old Testament studies. All the while he dabbled in classics and archaeology; he wrote poetry and penned newspaper opinion pieces.
Gayed entered the El Suryan (St Mary) monastery in 1954. From 1956 to 1962, he lived in a cave and experienced “complete freedom and clarification”. His teacher was the charismatic Fr Matta el-Meskin (Matthew the Poor), later to become an opponent. Sadat offered Matta the papacy in place of Shenouda in 1981.
Recalled from the hermit’s life, Gayed became dean of the Coptic Seminary and bishop for religious education with the saintly name of Shenouda. Within seven years, enrolment of part-time students had grown tenfold.
Shenouda was appointed personal secretary to the newly elected pope Kyrillos VI in 1959. After Kyrillos died in 1971, Gayed was enthroned as His Holiness Shenouda III, pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa.
More ebullient than his predecessor, he inspired the growth of churches outside Egypt and the number of bishops rose from 20 to 83. But life beyond the cloisters proved more perilous. In September 1981, Sadat arrested Shenouda along with 1,500 other “opposition figures”. He banished Shenouda to Wadi Natrun. A month later, Sadat was assassinated.
Eventually Mubarak recalled Shenouda to the papal seat. Vowing to be a turbulent priest no more, Shenouda told a welcoming party of 10,000 at St Mark’s Cathedral: “We Christians and Muslims are like organs in one body, which is Egypt.”
He often met Egypt’s supreme Muslim cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, and championed Arab causes. He backed the Madrid conference of 1991 intended to further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. For 20 years, Shenouda’s Ramadan breakfasts helped repair Muslim-Coptic rifts. Shenouda visited pope Paul VI in Rome in 1973 and signed a declaration of common faith. This marked the first meeting between Alexandrine and Roman pontiffs since 451. In 1989 he signed a similar concordat with his Orthodox brothers, and in 2000 he welcomed pope John Paul II to Egypt.
His comments on Jews often sailed close to crass anti-Semitism and he rebuffed calls to soften Coptic strictures on divorce.
On January 1st last year, 23 people were killed outside a Coptic church in Alexandria. When Egypt’s revolution began later that month, the sight of Christians chanting alongside Muslims in Tahrir Square, Korans and crosses held aloft, momentarily dispelled fears of sectarian carnage. But after Mubarak’s departure 12 died as extremists attacked churches in Cairo’s poor Imbaba district in May. When thousands of Copts took to the streets to protest against the state’s demolition of an “unlicensed” church in Aswan, the resulting military crackdown left 27 people dead.
Shenouda hailed the victims as martyrs, “beloved children whose blood does not come cheap”. Yet he faced defiance from the Maspero Youth Union, Copts who condemned the governing Supreme Council of the Allied Forces. There was therefore urgency in Shenouda’s call for national unity at a Christmas service in St Mark’s at the beginning of January this year. This month’s visit by Muslim Brotherhood leaders to Shenouda echoed that sentiment, as did the Maspero Youth’s slogan at cathedral prayers for the ailing pope: “Your people love you.”
Pope Shenouda III (Nazir Gayed), prelate, born August 3rd, 1923; died March 17th, 2012