Today, 4 November 2012, the Coptic Orthodox cathedral in Abbasiya, Cairo, witnessed what has been described in the media as an ‘altar lottery’ when a blindfolded young boy dipped his small hand into a glass bowl that contained the names of three vetted candidates and chose Anba (Bishop) Tawadros as the new Coptic Pope to succeed the late Shenouda III.
Today, 4 November 2012, the Coptic Orthodox cathedral in Abbasiya, Cairo, witnessed what has been described in the media as an ‘altar lottery’ when a blindfolded young boy dipped his small hand into a glass bowl that contained the names of three vetted candidates and chose Anba (Bishop) Tawadros as the new Coptic Pope to succeed the late Shenouda III.
In so doing, a period of uncertainty following the death of the late Pope on 17 March 2012 came to an end and Anba Tawadros will now become the 118th Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa in the Holy See of St Mark the Apostle.
Anba Tawadros has been the auxiliary bishop for the coastal governorate of El-Beheira in Egypt as well as auxiliary to Archbishop Bachomious who was the acting pope in this interim period and who facilitated the procedure for this selection / election that culminated this Sunday in the choice of a new future pope. [cont’d in file]
Read the full article (*.PDF Adobe Acrobat format) here: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/files/anba_tawadros.pdf
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© Harry Hagopian is an international lawyer, ecumenist and EU political consultant. He also acts as a Middle East and inter-faith advisor to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England & Wales and as Middle East consultant to ACEP (Christians in Politics) in Paris. He is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/HarryHagopian). Formerly an Executive Secretary of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Committee and Executive Director of the Middle East Council of Churches, he is now an international fellow, Sorbonne III University, Paris, consultant to the Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide (UK), Ecumenical consultant to the Primate of Armenian Church in UK & Ireland, and author of The Armenian Church in the Holy Land. Dr Hagopian’s own website is www.epektasis.net