Cairo, 07 January, 2020 / 7:30 pm (ACI Africa).
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt attended a Coptic Orthodox Liturgy Monday, praising cooperation between the Christians and Muslims of the country.
“God saw fit for us to live in difficult circumstances.... But as long as we’re together ... no one can do anything to us,” the AP reported him saying Jan. 6 at a Liturgy celebrated by Tawadros II, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, at the Cathedral of the Nativity in Egypt's new administrative capital, about 40 miles east of Cairo.
The liturgy celebrated Christmas Eve, as Christmas in the Coptic calendar falls Jan. 7 in the Gregorian calendar. Sisi has made a tradition in recent years of attending Liturgy for Christmas Eve among the Copts.
According to the US Commission for International Religious Freedom, Egypt's religious freedom conditions “generally trended in a more positive direction related to high-level official discourse and actions” in 2018, while “persistent challenges at the community level and a poor, broader human rights situation remained consistent with recent years.”
In the past year, Sisi's government has seen both a Coptic activist arrested on terrorism-related charges, and the sentencing of 30 men for planning to bomb a church in Alexandria.
