The bishop who makes his voice heard: Anba Makarios
Courtesy: Mohamed Hakim
Seven years ago, we entered as individuals into communities of
revolt. We joined one body that extended over streets and squares of
dissent. With each anniversary, the revolution is celebrated as that of
all Egyptians. But this year, we have chosen to go back to the
individuals, the initial makers of a grand moment in history. Through
their stories we spend some time reflecting, looking into how losses and
disappearances from that moment in our past continue to shape their
lives today.
— Anba
Makarios, a bishop in the governorate that has the highest number of
sectarian violence incidents in Egypt, has gone against the usual
appeasing rhetoric of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox church. He is a man who
makes his voice heard but avoids being seen; he avoids media
appearances, and expresses himself through official statements and brief
phone calls to television talk shows. Though he eludes the spotlight,
he has become an influential figure. The
outspoken positions of Makarios, the general bishop of the Diocese of
Minya and Abu Qurqas Minya, raised the question of whether or not they
are sanctioned by the church. And with each new act of violence against
Christians — the beheading of 21 Copts in Libya in 2015, the bombing of St. Peter’s Church in 2016, the bombing
of two churches on Palm Sunday in 2017 — there is a hum in the Coptic
media wondering what Anba Makarios would have said had these attacks
taken place in his diocese. Makarios’
diocese has particular characteristics. The population of the Upper
Egypt governorate of Minya is 5.75 million according to the 2017 census,
and although no information is available on the size of the Coptic
population in Egypt, local sources
indicate that they make up 30 percent of the population in Minya
compared to around 10 percent nationally. Minya is also a hub for
Islamist groups which have been perpetrating violence since the 1970s,
including Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which carried out the assassination of
the late President Mohamed Anwar Sadat. Ordained
as the bishop of Minya and Abu Qurqas in 2004 — one of several Minya
eparchies — Anba Makarios’ statements before the revolution were not out
of the ordinary despite the sectarian violence that would flare up from
time to time. Indeed, when on January 11, 2011, a policeman opened fire
on a Christian family on a train that was headed from Minya to Cairo,
killing one man and injuring four other people, the diocese’s statement
was a simple narration of the incident, which mentioned the phone call
that Pope Shenouda III, who was receiving treatment in the United
States, made to Anba Makarios to check on the wounded. During
the papacy of the late Pope Shenouda III, the pope became the official
political representative of Copts and Coptic laypeople were marginalized
from the public arena. Although bishops were given the liberty to speak
to the press, none voiced any views that diverged from those of the
pope, if they addressed politics at all. Pope
Shenouda III died in March 2012, leading to a significant change in the
church at a time of great upheaval in the country. Sectarian violence
has also been on the rise since the revolution — the Egyptian Initiative
for Personal Rights (EIPR)documented
77 incidents of sectarian violence and tension in Minya alone between
January 25, 2011, and January 25, 2016. This figure does not include the
attacks that followed the dispersal of the Rabea al-Adaweya and Nahda
sit-ins in the summer of 2013, when approximately 44 churches and dozens
of properties owned by private Coptic citizens and religious
associations were torched and looted and seven people killed in Minya. It was
in December, 2013 that Makarios started charting a different direction.
It seemed like the right time for the general bishop of a diocese that
experiences forms of sectarian violence almost on a daily basis. In
December 2013, a fight broke out between the Coptic residents of the
village of Nazlet Ebeid and the Muslim residents of the village of
Hawarta in Minya over the dividing line for construction on a piece of
land. The fight killed four and injured 20 others. Anba Makarios spoke up
against convening a customary reconciliation session, saying that they
“compromise justice and equality.” Makarios also hinted, for the first
time, at security forces’ dereliction of duty. Reconciliation
sessions are a customary method of settling disputes and containing
sectarian violence in lieu of the legal system and judiciary that have
had been adopted by the state and accepted by the church. EIPR
researcher Ishaq Ibrahim describes them as “a way to circumvent the law,
grant the accused legal impunity and establish different forms of
religious discrimination.” Anba
Makarios’ position and statements, however, were not in line with the
church’s official public position. Questions about how whether he was
directly disobeying the leadership of the Abbasseya-based Coptic
Orthodox Church were raised. But in May 2016, after a sectarian incident
took place in Makarios’ diocese that not only captured national
attention, but international headlines, Pope Tawadros II authorized
Anba Makarios to handle the crisis and speak on behalf of the church. A
Coptic woman named Soad Thabet was attacked
in her house, stripped naked and dragged through the streets of the
village of Karm. The incident was sparked by a rumor of a romantic
relationship between her son, Ashraf Abdo, and a Muslim woman from the
village. The
Minya bishop’s statement read, “The church is firmly against referring
the Karm case to a reconciliation session.” Makarios later refused to
meet with a delegation from Parliament and Beit al-Aila (House of the
Family), a body convened by Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb and
made up of priests and Al-Azhar sheikhs, to resolve problems that arise
from sectarian violence. That the
delegation came unannounced was the reason Anba Makarios gave for his
refusal to receive the delegation. His position was unexpected,
especially given that the delegation had an official state mandate to
attempt to resolve the crisis. He condemned “this parade of courtesy and
kindness as an approach to resolution,” saying it has allowed
“officials to escape accountability and even their duties, and turned
each catastrophe into mere fuel for a bigger catastrophe to follow soon
after.”
Before joining the episcopate
In arecording
recounting his memories of the late Pope Shenouda III, Anba Makarios
describes his first meeting with the pope in the Syrian Monastery in
Wadi al-Natrun when he was under house arrest. President Sadat had
arrested hordes of dissidents, and repealed state recognition of
Shenouda III as the pope and confined him to the monastery. The arrests
came just months before Sadat’s assassination by a militant Islamist
group in 1982. Former President Hosni Mubarak repealed the confinement
decree in 1985. Born
Makram Ayyad on June 10, 1958, Anba Makarios became a monk in his
twenties and joined the Virgin Mary Monastery of Baramos in Wadi
al-Natrun, where he was named Kirollos of the Baramos. Makarios’
charisma and strong personality, for which he had become known during
his time as a monk, caught the late pope’s attention. He and four other
monks were asked to accompany the pope on a reconstruction mission to
the St. Anthony Monastery in the California desert. Anba Makarios,
however, politely declined the offer. Over the
following years, Makarios of the Baramos Monastery was promoted until
he was ordained as a priest in 2001. It seems the pope had not forgotten
him as he sent him another proposal via Anba Arsenios, the current
Archbishop of Minya and then-secretary of the Baramos Monastery, to
priest Makarios of the Baramos Monastery to travel to the California
desert and replace the late Anba Karas as abbot at the St. Anthony
Monastery. Makarios’
feelings about traveling had not changed but he was — as he puts it —
embarrassed to turn the pope down again. Anba Arsenios, however,
intervened to request that the pope appoint him as an assistant to
manage the Minya diocese rather than sending him on a mission abroad.
The pope accepted the counterproposal on the condition that Makarios
join his secretarial staff for a time. Makarios worked there for one
year, next door to the Pope’s chambers. Anba
Makarios does not talk much about himself, but what little he said to us
reveals much about his character. As a Christian, the characters of the
Holy Bible are of great importance to him, but he says that he was also
heavily influenced by Leo Tolstoy, Naguib Mahfouz and Khalil Gibran. A
voracious reader, he spent 25 years in the desert as a monk, reading,
writing and translating. His first title, Many Teachers, was published in 1988 under the pen name “A monk of the Baramos Monastery,” as was the case with his subsequent works. “The
purpose of writing anonymously,” he says, “was not to humble myself so
much as it was to hear readers’ true opinions and allow them the liberty
to choose my books without knowing who the author was, as I had made
quite a lot of friends.” Makarios was ordained as bishop in 2004, after
which he began to publish under his name. His literary production
continued and he became supervisor in 2011 of the Kiraza Magazine,
the official magazine of the Coptic Orthodox Church, established by
Pope Shenouda III in 1965 when he was still the general bishop for
Christian education.
An avid Orthodox
Anba
Makarios became known as a rare revolutionary within the church for
being outspoken on sectarianism. But near the end of November 2017, a video
surfaced of a meeting in the diocese, in which he called the mutual
recognition of baptism in the Coptic Orthodox and Catholic churches
unacceptable, referring to an agreement on baptism that had been signed
by Pope Tawadros II and Pope Francis during the Catholic pope’s visit to
Egypt in April of that year. The video was a disappointment to those
who saw in Makarios hope for a movement of reform within the church. In the
video, Makarios said that the Coptic Orthodox Church does not recognize
any Catholic rites and that Catholicism was was introduced to Egypt by
the French and Protestantism by the British occupation. Both the
Catholic and Evangelical churches expressed their dismay at his
comments, and Anba Makarios then issued a statement in which he
apologized, but only to Catholics. Anba
Makarios’ views were in line with the positions of other clergymen who
were indignant in their opposition to the mutual recognition of baptism,
with several priests releasing statements voicing their objection.
Contrary to the Vatican’s official statement and the Coptic Orthodox
Church’s earlier announcement, both Pope Tawadros II and the Holy Synod –
in its first routine session after the controversy – denied that an
agreement on the mutual recognition of baptism had been signed and
claimed that it was only a joint declaration to dialogue on the issue.
The construction of churches
In
Minya, some incidents are sparked by the disapproval of romantic
relationships between Muslims and Christians, leading to the torching of
houses, property and churches and the displacement of Christian
families – even if they were not involved in the incident. But most
often, sectarian violence is about places of worship and comes as a
response to attempts to construct churches or hold prayers, even if
these are places where prayers have been held for years.
A Coptic district in Ezbet al-Forn in Minya - Photograph: Heba Afify
The
right to the construction and renovation of churches did not become a
topic of discussion until after the revolution. EIPR researcher Ibrahim
associates the fact that calls for the construction of churches as well
as condemnation of discriminatory practices against Copts have become
stronger and louder with the societal changes that followed the
revolution. “The
first change within the church came,” Ibrahim explains, “when a younger
generation of leaders emerged in the clergy, who believe in people’s
right to knowledge and see the media as a useful tool when it comes to
Coptic causes. They are, therefore, motivated to speak to the press.
Anba Makarios is the most prominent figure within this trend.” The
second change that Ibrahim points to was the shifts within the press,
with the establishment of several privately owned outlets after 2011.
This enabled a space to write about the church and Coptic issues.
Finally, Ibrahim adds, there was a certain atmosphere of freedom after
the revolution which lasted until the end of 2013, when these figures
were compelled to withdraw from public space again. “Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult,” Makarios says, citing Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace about the long-awaited law on the construction of Christian places of worshippassed in 2016. It was celebrated by the church and Coptic members of Parliament cheered for it loudly, while Makarios’ response
was far more muted. “I hope there are no loopholes in this law that
destroy it, that it does not contain within it the reasons for its
failure or lack of implementation,” he said. Makarios went so far as to say,
“Myself, I feel that this law was passed to curb the construction of
churches,” pointing to various prohibitive conditions. “If local
security officers deem the security circumstances unfavorable,
construction will be prevented. Within this law Coptic issues remain a
matter for the security apparatus.” Several
churches were indeed closed after the passing of the law. In August
2017, two churches within Makarios’ diocese were closed, the Anba Paul
Church in the village of Kedwan and the Virgin Mary Church in the
village of Ezbet al-Forn. They were reopened in September after Makarios had released a statement
on September 10, thanking President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for his
intervention to resolve the crisis, although he did not specify what
form this intervention took. Just a
few weeks later, three more churches in Minya were closed within one
week in October. Anba Makarios released a statement, in which he said,
“We have kept our silence for two weeks after a church was closed,
hoping that officials would carry out their duties entrusted to them by
the state. But things have only got worse — another church was closed,
and then another, and attempts to close a fourth were made. Copts are
forced to travel to neighboring villages to perform their rituals, as if
prayer were a crime that they should be punished for.” The
statement infuriated the governor of Minya, Major General Essam
al-Bedeiwy, who responded that same day with a strongly worded statement
of his own, in which he called on Anba Makarios to be careful and
accurate with his choice of words, lest it be understood that the church
is seeking to antagonize the state. Anba Makarios did not respond. Commenting
on Anba Makarios’ statement and the Minya governor’s response, Ibrahim
says, “Many people are afraid to speak freely now. But Anba Makarios’
stance is different. He is applying pressure on those institutions that
are particularly rigid regarding Copts’ rights, but he does not
criticize the presidency.” Ibrahim
believes that Anba Makarios has succeeded in peacefully protesting the
systematic practices that aim to prevent Copts from enjoying their right
to worship. He points to the different methods Makarios uses, for
instance following one of the recent church closures, Copts prayed on
the street, and in another, they staged a sit-in and held prayers until
the church was reopened. In his
interview with Mada Masr, Anba Makarios refuses to be described as
extraordinary. “I do not believe that my presence in particular in Minya
makes such a big difference,” he says. “Any bishop can lead the march,
and probably better than I do.” Anba
Makarios’ politics is quite different from Anba Demetrios, the Bishop of
Mallawa, Ansana and Ashmounein, another Minya diocese. The disparity is
highlighted in Anba Demetrios’ statement
in November in which he thanked the president, the interior minister,
the director of National Security Agency, the head of the Minya Security
Directorate and the governor for their cooperation in resolving the
problems facing the Coptic church. In 2018,
hundreds of Minya Copts were left with no place to pray or celebrate
Eastern Orthodox Christmas. According to Anba Makarios, over 15 houses
of worship are currently closed, and there are 70 villages and small
towns currently with no Christian places of worship. In Cairo, Pope Tawadros II celebrated
Coptic Christmas in the new administrative capital at the Cathedral of
the Nativity — celebrated by Sisi and the media as the largest in the
Middle East — in the presence of several state officials, including the
president. These prayer arrangements received intense coverage in the
Coptic media, but were not enough to overshadow Anba Makarios’ surprise
visits to the residents of the Minya village of Ezbet al-Tobgy. He
joined them in their Christmas eve prayers at their small church made up
of one room and an altar. When the
Diocese of Minya and Abu Qurqas experiences sectarian violence, the
parishioners prefer to remain silent until the release of Anba Makarios’
official statement, which usually provides relevant information,
supported by eyewitness reports. They trust him, believing that he will
not relinquish their rights. It has
become the norm that bishops and men of the cloth only speak to
officials, communicating information to their parishioners through
representatives. Anba Makarios, however, visits the affected Coptic
citizens within his diocese following each crisis. “Nothing is
everlasting but God, the church and the people,” Anba Makarios says to
us. “Connections with public figures and powerful men are futile unless
they are eventually employed to benefit the people.” Thus he summarizes
five years of strong positions and bold statements that have earned him a
reputation as the clergyman who has broken the church’s silence and
spoken up against the status quo that denies the existence of
sectarianism in Egypt.
The
right to the construction and renovation of churches did not become a
topic of discussion until after the revolution. EIPR researcher Ibrahim
associates the fact that calls for the construction of churches as well
as condemnation of discriminatory practices against Copts have become
stronger and louder with the societal changes that followed the
revolution.
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