As massive demonstrations moved into their second week in Cairo —
with more than 250,000 protesters filling the streets demanding an end
to the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak — the Vatican’s top
ambassador said there is “sense of uncertainty” in the north African
nation.
“There is a will for change in the country,” Archbishop Michael
Fitzgerald, M. Afr., the Vatican nuncio to Egypt told CNA in a phone
interview from Cairo, Feb. 1.
He said the “underlying factors” in the protests are “social
conditions which have made life very difficult for people” — including
high rates of poverty and unemployment. In addition, he said there is a
general “feeling of dissatisfaction with regard to a lack of political
rights and dissatisfaction with the recent elections.”
The nunciature, the Vatican's diplomatic mission to Egypt located in
Cairo, has been quiet in recent days.
There is not a lot of movement
due to communications restrictions and a curfew that has left only a
six-hour window for people to be legally in the streets.
The nuncio is
in contact with religious communities by telephone to gauge the
situation.
“Some, of course, are worried,” he said, “but I haven't had any news
of any real disaster in any part of the country as far as the
Christians are concerned.”
Archbishop Fitzgerald said the demonstrations have been remarkably
free from religious overtones and that there are many signs of
Christians and Muslims working together.
“There isn't a religious distinction,” he said. “They are not
dividing themselves into Christians and Muslims, they're just the
Egyptian citizens.”
Archbishop Fitzgerald said that in the first days of unrest, Muslims
and Christians spontaneously formed neighborhood committees to provide
security when police forces abruptly fled the area.
About 90 percent of Egypt’s population is Muslim. Catholics make up a
tiny minority of about 500,000.
The majority of the nation’s
Christians are members of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Catholic Coptic Patriarch Cardinal Antonios Naguib, head of the
country’s Catholic Church, also said the protests have brought out
“really wonderful” displays of Christian-Muslim unity.
The country was rocked by a wave of anti-Christian persecution at the
start of the year, including the killing of 21 Coptic Orthodox
worshipers by a Muslim extremist suicide bomber outside a church in
Alexandria, Egypt.
Many analysts have expressed fear that the militant Muslim
Brotherhood sect would exploit the protests in a bid to turn Egypt into
an Islamic state.
But in an interview Feb. 1 with the Franciscan-run
news service, Terrasanta.net, Patriarch Naguib said a new “maturity” is
being demonstrated in the protests.
“The religious element hasn't appeared at all,” he said. “It is a
real political movement and we really hope that this unity and
solidarity that is being shown at the moment will help to change the
mentality, bringing more mutual acceptance and collaboration.”
In fact, some leading Muslims have expressed hopes that the current
protests will lead to a post-Mubarak era that would rid the country of
Islamic extremism.
“This is a revolution guided by the middle-high class which is
asking before all for political and religious freedom,” Wael Farouq, a
Muslim and a professor at the American University of Cairo told the
Milan based on-line daily, Il Sussidiario.net Jan. 31.
“The fundamentalists will not take control of the revolt,” Farouq
said. “What is happening in these days demonstrates that the true enemy
of religious liberty in Egypt is the Mubarak regime, which seeks to
divide Christians and Muslims to control the country."
Farouq said that although President Mubarak has sought to blame the
Muslim Brotherhood for the protests, the protests are clearly “a
secular revolution.”
“The hundreds of thousands of people who have come down to the
squares were asking loudly for the unity of Christians and Muslims. One
of their slogans, for example, was ‘Christians and Muslims, we are all
Egyptians’,” he said.
“At a certain point, one person tried to shout one of their slogans,
‘Islam is the solution,’ and was immediately chased from the area.
Others … contested them … with these words: ‘We are Egyptians, not
Muslims.’ A Christian carried a cross with him, and as soon as the other
protesters realized it, they were happy and they raised it over their
back, holding it high out of appreciation. I can tell you this because I
saw it with my own eyes.”
The leader of the Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Christian community, Pope
Shenouda III, has expressed his continued support for the stability of
the Mubarak regime and has urged believers not to join the protest
movement.
Catholic leaders, thus far, have declined to comment or take sides in the political debate.
The Catholic Church, Archbishop Fitzgerald told CNA, is “leaving it to the citizens to decide what they want to do."
Catholics, he said, are Egyptians and the Church’s concerns “are the same as all the Egyptians.”
He declined to speculate on the future of the country.
“No one knows exactly what is going to happen so there is this sense
of uncertainty and I think that everybody shares in that,” he said.
“We don't know about the future. We have to wait and see.”