Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al Sisi has pledged to construct the nation’s largest church as part of the massive project to create a new capital city.
During his official visit to St Mark’s cathedral in Cairo to join with Pope Tawadros II and other members of the Coptic Church for the January 6 Christmas celebrations, the president announced his intention to simultaneously build the largest church and mosque by 2018 at the site of the new capital, to the east of congested Cairo. The opening of the church, he vowed, would be in time to mark the 50th anniversary of St Mark’s.
Acknowledging the suffering of the Coptic community, most recently through the December 11 suicide attack on St Mark’s which claimed 28 lives, President al Sisi said: “We are one. Ugliness has no place here. Only beauty has a place among us…I am here in a house of God, and I say please God, keep Egypt safe.”
Just days after the church announcement, Egypt’s official body for pronouncements on and resolving disputes regarding the Koran, Dar al Ifta al Misryah (the House of Fatwa), ruled that the construction of Christian churches in Islamic lands is both permissible and just in terms of equality between people.