Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II was recently in Australia for a 10 day official visit – this first to the country as Pope. DAVID ADAMS had an audience with His Holiness at the Coptic Orthodox Church’s new base in Melbourne…
The Coptic Orthodox Church, according to tradition, was founded by St Mark in 55 AD, making it one of the oldest church denominations in the world and one which has spanned 2,000 years of human history.
So it’s perhaps not surprising that when asked about the recent pressure the church has been under in Egypt – including the fatal bombing earlier this year at St Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria which came only a short time after Pope Tawadros II had celebrated Mass there, His Holiness takes a long view.
Pope Tawadros II during interviews held in the new Melbourne headquarters for the Coptic Orthodox Church at Eporo Tower. PICTURE: Supplied.
“When you read our Coptic history along 20 centuries, you are ready for these moments.”
– Pope Tawadros II, speaking with regard persecution members of the Coptic Orthodox Church have faced.
“When you read our Coptic history along 20 centuries, you are ready for these moments,” he said in Melbourne recently at the end of his first official visit to Australia.
“We are ready and we receive this moment with strong faith and strong prayer…The pressures during the long history [are] like waves. But generally we try to be [a] peace-maker in our society to keep and maintain the Egyptian national unity.”
Pope Tawadros II, the 118th Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St Mark, spent 10 days in Australia, where some 90,000 Copts live – a fact which makes it the third largest Coptic community outside of Egypt. During the visit earlier this month, he went to Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra and, as well as meeting with church members and officials, met with Australian Government representatives including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The Pope, whose church has some 14 million members in Egypt, took office in 2012 after a ceremony in which, in accordance with tradition, his name was drawn from a glass bowl by a blind-folded boy. Known affectionately to many Copts as the ‘Pope of Hope’, Pope Tawadros II has since visited church communities in numerous nations around the world including, just last month, Japan where he inaugurated the first Coptic Orthodox church there.
He’s also been an instrumental figure in building relationships between church denominations, including visiting the Vatican in 2013 and, in April this year, hosting Pope Francis on a two day visit to Egypt.
“I think that the relation between the churches is very, very important and help[s] in the…peace process generally,” he says.
Peace – and the role of the church in its promotion – is a theme that the Pope returns to time and again.
“I think that the church is the voice of peace…” he says. “I think that this is the message of the church.”
In Egypt, this sees the church playing an active role in trying to “build good relations with all”, including the Egyptian Government, Parliament and Islamic organisations. “This is very important because we are told by our Lord Jesus Christ we must [be] like salt and we must be light for our societies,” Pope Tawadros II notes.
Pope Tawadros II during a visit to a Coptic school in Coolaroo, Melbourne. PICTURE: Supplied.
It also means the Coptic Orthodox Church acts as a voice for peace in the wider region of the Middle East and North Africa, a region which has seen an unprecedented level of persecution of Christians in recent years and, as a result, a mass exodus of Christians from the region leaving some countries like Iraq and Syria with only a small, in some cases tiny, remnant of the Christian communities that once lived there.
Pope Tawadros II says he believes that the presence of Christians in the Middle East is “very, very important for the stability of the world”, adding that the exodus of Christians from some countries is “very dangerous” to that stability.
While he generally stays away from politics, he says that some of the Western policies for the region have been “wrong” and adds that Western countries should not just respect the values, history and traditions of Arabic nations but also the Arabic way of thinking.
“In [the] Western world, the thinking is like [a] straight line or linear but in our area, thinking is spiral. Spiral. This is different in understanding each other.”
Pope Tawadros II made headlines soon after touching down in Sydney when he was asked about same-sex marriage and Australia’s postal survey on the issue and said that the church view was that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a stance he doesn’t retreat from.
“We are a very traditional, ancient church,” he explains. “We are taking our instructions from the Holy Scriptures. We know from many generations before – along 20 centuries – that marriage is between one man and one woman and we keep this. But, because I am not political either, we don’t intervene in the policies here of the government.”
His trip to Australia – which he describes as a “very beautiful country” with “very lovely people” – also saw him meet with numerous young people particularly during visits to schools. It’s something he nominates as a highlight of the trip, noting that having a dialogue with youth about issues like the pervasive use of technology in modern society are important for the future of the church.
“[The] role of the church is very, very important…to build their minds and hearts in [a] good way,” he says. “Technology may be in the mind, in the hand, but it [will] not satisfy the heart. Church can satisfy the heart.”
Pope Tawadros II officiating at the consecration of the church of St Verena and St Bishoy in Eporo Tower. PICTURE: Ramy Attia.
The trip also saw him open the first Coptic Orthodox monastery for nuns in Australia – the Archangel Michael Monastery in Melbourne – as well as officiate at the opening of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Melbourne‘s new headquarters at Eporo Tower in the city’s La Trobe Street.
The lower four-and-a-half floors of the 44 storey building – the name of which means ‘king’ in the Coptic language – are occupied by the Diocese of Melbourne and Affilated Regions and include the richly decorated St Verena and St Bishoy Coptic Orthodox Church as well as Sunday School classrooms, administration offices, a function centre/dining hall, an Orthodox bookstore/cafe and a CBD campus for St Athanasius College. A decorative highlight is the 15 metre tall Eporo Mosaic which, through its 500,000 tiles, tells the story of the church’s history.
Asked what he’d like people to be praying for, Pope Tawadros II responds that, as the voice of “justice, of peace” in the world, Christians have a responsibility to care for the “gifts of God” and ensure access for all.
“I think God gives man many gifts,” he says. “And our role [is] to keep and maintain these gifts, like climate, like water and the purity of air…There are many millions of people without drinking water, for example, many millions of people live in very contaminated societies, many millions of people suffer from severe diseases, like AIDS, for example, and other diseases, and so on.”
He stresses that God’s gifts are given for all people.
“[He] gives air for all people, [He] gives water for all people,” the Pope says. “Therefore, the justice between all countries is very, very important to keep the gifts of God.”
Clarification: The story initially said 13 had died in the Alexandria bombing. Due to differing figures in reports, this figure has been removed.
