Catholics, Copts, Muslims: Latin Bishop of Alexandria on Christianity in Egypt

By Joseph Tulloch

Claudio Lurati first arrived in Egypt 31 years ago. Today, the Italian Comboni missionary is a bishop, and serves as Latin-rite Apostolic Vicar of Alexandria, a city on the Nile Delta which played a crucial role in the early centuries of Christianity. 

In Rome for a recent meeting of CELRA – the episcopal conference bringing together Latin bishops from across the Arab world – Bishop Lurati spoke to Vatican News about his ministry, the ancient city of Alexandria, the relations between Catholics, Copts, and Muslims in Egypt today, and the ongoing humanitarian disaster unfolding across the border in Gaza.   

The following transcript has been lightly edited for style and brevity.

Vatican News: Tell me a little bit about the Latin, or Roman Catholic, Church in Egypt.

Bishop Claudio Lurati: The Latin community in Egypt has been there, in different forms, for a long time. We like to say that it began with St. Francis himself, when he went to visit the Sultan [Malik al-Kamil] in the year 1219. Since then, there have always been some Franciscan communities in Egypt, mostly taking care of traders or diplomatic personnel.

That was until the beginning of the 19th century, because at that time the new ruler, Muhammad Ali, invited Europeans from various countries, mostly France, Italy and Malta, to come to Egypt to contribute to the development of the country. Many engineers and technicians came to Egypt, and they stayed for a long time.

At the end of the Second World War, the Roman Catholic community in Egypt, mostly foreigners, made up around 120,000 people. Then with the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, most people left, and the community was very much reduced.  Now my guess is that there are about 60,000 people in the country belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. There are about 1,000-2,000 Egyptians, and all the others are immigrants, with probably some 30,000-35,000 Sudanese, mostly refugees. 

Q: You mentioned the exodus of foreigners from Egypt in the post-war period. I recently read a novel by the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany – in Italian the title was Ad Alessandria gli alberi camminano – which talks about how this transition took place in the city of Alexandria: the transition from a multiethnic, multireligious city to a largely homogenous one. Are traces of the old Alexandria visible today?

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A: Yes, there are traces. What you see, first of all, is the architecture. If you walk around Alexandria, you see so many styles, you see buildings that are clearly made by Italians or French engineers. The same can be said about Cairo. And this multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society is still there in people’s memories. There even used to be a very large Jewish community in Alexandria, which had been there for over 2,000 years. Some books of the Bible, of the Old Testament, were actually written in Alexandria, according to the scholars. So there was a community that was there already at the time of Jesus, which has now disappeared with all the events of the last 60 years. 

Pope Leo with members of CELRA in the Vatican on Thursday   (@VATICAN MEDIA)

Q: How are your relations with the Coptic Orthodox Church?

A: The largest Christian community in Egypt, and in fact in the entire Middle East, is the Coptic Orthodox Church. It’s hard to say how many there are, but the estimate is that they are about 10% of the population, and I think it’s fairly accurate. That would mean 10, 11 million people, many of them in Cairo and Alexandria, but also in Upper Egypt, where in some areas the percentage of Christians goes even to 20 or 30%.

It’s a very lively church, with a Patriarch who they call Papa, just as we do, and some very flourishing monasteries with lots of vocations, which Egyptian Christians love to visit. One thing that impresses me about the Coptic Orthodox is that they are really present everywhere. Cairo is expanding a lot, and if you go around the new areas of the city, you see churches everywhere.

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches don’t run many initiatives together, but the contact between us is daily. For instance, I would guess that about 70 or 80 percent of the employees of our Roman Catholic diocese are Orthodox. In terms of activities, we visit each other on the main occasions. We run more activities together with the other Catholic Churches, mainly the Coptic Catholic Church, which has about 300,000 people, with 10 dioceses all over Egypt. All the various Catholic bishops collaborate a lot, and we have a big focus on education, because there are about 170 Catholic schools in Egypt.

Q: What about your relations with the Muslim community?

A: Again, the contact is daily, because you go out on the street and nine people out of ten are Muslim. But on the level of interreligious dialogue, let me mention the Dominicans especially. They have a wonderful library, and there are many Muslim students that come to read the books there. They also have an ongoing dialogue with Al-Azhar University, the most important Muslim educational institution, where some of them even give lectures now and then.

Q: Finally, I wanted to ask what impact the terrible events across the border in Gaza are having on life in Egypt.

A: We follow the situation in Gaza with a great deal of pain. The Egyptian people, in a very natural way, sympathise with the Palestinians. At the same time, they want to preserve the peace they have achieved, with difficulty, with Israel. So, as far as peace is concerned, there is no going back, but there is a great deal of attention to what is happening to our brothers and sisters in Gaza.

The border with Gaza is closed, but there are still thousands of people who have managed to cross – perhaps because members of their family were already in Egypt, or because they needed medical care. Most of the Palestinians I have met have been hit by Israeli bombs, and are severely injured, often in wheelchairs, etc. 

I should add, though, that the refugees that we notice the most are not from Palestine but from Sudan. Over the past three years, we have received approximately one million refugees from Sudan. Among them, some were Catholic, so our churches have filled up. We now have a community of approximately 35,000 Catholics who have come from Sudan and South Sudan.