On his first evening in Egypt Pope Francis prayed with Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II at the site where dozens of Coptic Orthodox Christians were killed last December.
The two leaders placed flowers and lit candles in homage to the 29 who were murdered for their faith at St Peter and St Paul’s Church. The faithful chanted a song of martyrs, and some clashed cymbals under the darkened evening sky.
Inside the small church in Cairo, the leaders of several other Christian communities in Egypt, as well as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, sat before the congregation, which included family members of the victims.
A portion of one wall was splattered with blood, and pictures of those killed – many with bright smiles to the camera – were hung above. Some of the church’s stone columns were pockmarked from the debris or shrapnel sent flying from the explosion. Pope Francis touched the bloodstained wall and made the Sign of the Cross.
Earlier, Pope Tawadros and Pope Francis ended a long-standing disagreement between the two communions over the sacrament of Baptism.
The Coptic Orthodox Church had required new members joining from most non-Coptic churches, including the Catholic Church, to be baptised again. The Catholic Church recognises all baptisms performed with water and in “the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. Coptic Orthodox are received as full members, but not baptised again. The two leaders signed a statement saying they would “seek sincerely not to repeat the baptism” in such circumstances.
Pope Francis told Coptic leaders that the “innocent blood” of martyrs united Christians.
Pope asks North Korea and the US to pursue diplomacy
A diplomatic solution must be found to the escalating tension between North Korea and the United States, Pope Francis has told journalists.“The path is the path of negotiation, the path of a diplomatic solution,” he said when asked about US President Donald Trump’s decision to send Navy warships to the region in response to North Korea’s missile tests and threats of nuclear attack.
“What do you say to these leaders who hold responsibility for the future of humanity?” the Pope was asked during his flight home from Cairo. “I will call on them. I’m going to call on them like I have called on the leaders of different places,” he replied.
The situation in North Korea, he added, had been heated for a long time, “but now it seems it has heated up too much, no?”
“I always call resolving problems through the diplomatic path, negotiations …” because the future of humanity depended on it, he said.
Francis cited conflicts around the world, then said: “Let’s look for a diplomatic solution. And there, I believe that the United Nations has a duty to regain its leadership a bit because it has been watered down.”
Thousands attend papal Mass
The only kind of fanaticism that is acceptable to God is being fanatical about loving and helping others, Pope Francis said on his final day in Egypt.“True faith,” he told 15,000 Catholics at an open-air Mass at Cairo’s Air Defence Stadium, “makes us more charitable, more merciful, more honest and more humane. It moves our hearts to love everyone without counting the cost.”
