POPE: TRUE FAITH MOVES OUR HEART TO LOVE EVERYONE
15,000 rejoice as Pope Francis leads mass for Egyptian Catholics
CAIRO
POPE Francis has left Egypt at the end of a historic, two-day visit defined by calls for Christian-Muslim unity against religious militancy.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi saw the Catholic pontiff off at Cairo Airport yesterday.
Francis also led a jubilant mass for thousands of Egyptian Catholics yesterday during a visit to support the country’s embattled Christian minority and promote dialogue with Muslims.
The visit, coming after the Islamic State killed dozens of worshippers in three church bombings in Egypt in December and April, provided the beleaguered Christians with an occasion to celebrate.
A crowd of about 15,000 people cheered and released yellow and white balloons with Francis, flanked by security, circling the Cairo stadium on a golf cart and waving to the crowds as a chorus sang a joyous hymn.
The smiling pontiff was then greeted by a group of children wearing pharaonic headdresses.
For the liturgy, Francis first kissed an altar then listened to passages from the Acts of Apostles, which tells the story of the church’s founding, before delivering a sermon on faith, charity and tolerance.
“True faith... moves our heart to love everyone... It makes us see the other not as an enemy to be overcome, but a brother and sister to be loved,” he said.
The mass came on the second and last day of Francis’s visit, which saw him plead for tolerance and peace on Friday as he visited a Coptic church bombed by IS in December.
The spiritual leader of the world’s almost 1.3 billion Catholics is the first pope to visit the headquarters of the grand imam of AlAzhar, one of the Muslim world’s leading religious authorities.
At the stadium, worshippers, old and young, nuns and priests, had been bussed in under tight security, with the country under a state of emergency following the church bombings.
“We wanted to see the pope and show him that there is no problem here and that the situation is safe. We feel proud that he is in Egypt. It’s a message that we are still standing on our feet,” said Kanzi Beblawi, 33, as she waited to board a bus.
Some waved Egyptian flags and released balloons the colour of the Vatican flag while others were tied together to form a rosary that rose to the sky.
The event brings together members of all Catholic rites in the country — Coptic, Armenian, Maronite and Melkite.
Egypt’s Catholic community is estimated at about 272,000.
The stadium chosen for the mass is on Cairo’s outskirts and easier to secure. His tightly scheduled trip was heavily secured as he travelled from one engagement to another in a closed car.
IS has threatened further attacks after the suicide bombings that killed 29 people in December and 45 earlier this month.
On Friday, the 80-year-old pontiff denounced violence and “demagogic” populism in an address to a Muslim-Christian conference.
“Peace alone... is holy and no act of violence can be perpetrated in the name of God, for it would profane his name.”
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 92 million, have long complained of marginalisation in the Muslim-majority country. Egypt has the largest Christian community of the Middle East. Agencies