{{The new pope of Egypt’s Orthodox Coptic church was enthroned in an elaborate ceremony lasting nearly four hours, attended by the nation’s Muslim prime minister and a host of cabinet ministers and politicians.}}<\/p>\n
Pope Tawadros II, 60, was elected November 4, but the official enthronement ceremony was held on Sunday at the Coptic cathedral in Cairo.<\/p>\n
He replaced Shenouda III, who died in March after leading the ancient church for 40 years.<\/p>\n
The packed cathedral repeatedly erupted into applause as the ceremony progressed.<\/p>\n
The ceremony’s climax came when the papal crown was placed on Tawadros’ head before he sat on the throne of St Mark, the Coptic church’s founding saint.<\/p>\n
Tawadros did not address the televised ceremony, but had a brief speech read on his behalf by one of the church’s leaders in which he pledged to work for the good of Egypt, with its Muslims and Christians alike.<\/p>\n
Egypt’s Christians make up about 10 per cent of the nation’s estimated 83 million people, making them the largest single Christian community in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Christians have long complained of discrimination, particularly in the last four decades as the country’s Muslim majority moved toward religious conservatism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The new pope of Egypt’s Orthodox Coptic church was enthroned in an elaborate ceremony lasting nearly four hours, attended by the nation’s Muslim prime minister and a host of cabinet ministers and politicians.}} Pope Tawadros II, 60, was elected November 4, but the official enthronement ceremony was held on Sunday at the Coptic cathedral in […]<\/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-4173","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\/4173","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=4173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4173"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=4173"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=4173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}