{{Bishop Tawadros has been chosen as the new pope of Egypt’s Coptic Christians, becoming the leader of the largest Christian minority in the Middle East.}}<\/p>\n
His name was selected from a bowl by a blindfolded boy at a ceremony in Cairo’s St Mark’s Cathedral. Three candidates had been shortlisted.<\/p>\n
The 60-year-old succeeds Pope Shenouda III, who died in March aged 88.<\/p>\n
Attacks on Copts are on the increase, and many Copts say they fear the country’s new Islamist leaders.<\/p>\n
The other two candidates were Bishop Raphael and Father Raphael Ava Mina. They were chosen in a ballot by a council of some 2,400 Church and community officials in October.<\/p>\n
Their names were written on pieces of paper and put in crystal balls sealed with wax on the church altar.<\/p>\n
A blindfolded boy – one of 12 shortlisted children – then drew out the name of Bishop Tawadros.<\/p>\n
Strict measures were in place to make sure there is no foul play during the televised ceremony: the three pieces of paper with candidates’ names were all the same size and tied up the same way.<\/p>\n
Copts say this process ensures the selection is in God’s hands.<\/p>\n
Bishop Tawadros will be enthroned in a ceremony on 18 November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Bishop Tawadros has been chosen as the new pope of Egypt’s Coptic Christians, becoming the leader of the largest Christian minority in the Middle East.}} His name was selected from a bowl by a blindfolded boy at a ceremony in Cairo’s St Mark’s Cathedral. Three candidates had been shortlisted. The 60-year-old succeeds Pope Shenouda III, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-3913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}