Cairo, 19 August, 2022 / 6:23 pm (ACI Africa).
The Catholic charity and Pontifical foundation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International, is providing scholarships for the training of Priests in Egypt to expand their pastoral care to Christians in the country who, the foundation notes, have been marginalized.
In a Thursday, August 18 report, the charity foundation that supports Christians in areas experiencing religious persecution notes that Catholics in Egypt are less than 1 percent of the entire population, and that Christians, generally, are treated as “second-class” citizens in the country that links Northeast Africa with the Middle East.
In Egypt, the Coptic Catholic Church is in communion with the Holy See, ACN notes, adding, “Currently, the church, which has a small diaspora, has about 200,000 believers served by about 240 priests.”
“Aid to the Church in Need supports the Catholic Church in the country both through scholarships for priestly training and by promoting pastoral projects such as summer camps for young people. The aid organization provided over CHF 360,000 for projects in 2020,” the foundation reports.
ACN expresses regret that Christians in Egypt continue to suffer in a country where Christianity was the dominant religion “before Islamization in the 7th century”.