The Coptic Catholic Patriarchate of Alexandria (1)

The Copts are natives of Egypt. They descend from the ancient Egyptians whom the Arabs called “gupt” for short, a term from which the word “Copt” is derived.

The Copts claim to have been evangelized by the Apostle St. Mark. Since the beginning, the Catholic Copts have depended on the Bishop of Alexandria and observed in Greek the Alexandrine Liturgy, called that of St. Mark.

At the time of the Council of Nicaea (325), Alexandria exercised a certain authority over the provinces of Egypt and this was an older organization. St. Athanasius, the great opponent of Arianism, Bishop of Alexandria from 328 to 373, possessed this authority, which gave him the support of the entire province. Unfortunately, this part of the Catholic world would fall into heresy.

The Egyptians Fall into Heresy

In the 5th century, when Monophysitism appeared, the Patriarch of Egypt, Dioscorus, sympathized with the new heresy and even refused to submit to the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

Monophysitism (from the Greek monos, unique, and physis, nature), the doctrine of Eutyches, Archimandrite of Constantinople, claimed that there was only one nature in Jesus Christ with His human nature having been absorbed by the divine nature in union in one and only Person.

This heresy was opposed to Nestorianism, which taught that there were not only two natures in Christ, but also two Persons. It was in wanting to combat this error that Eutyches, refusing to admit the infallible Magisterium of the Church, allowed himself to be carried away by the opposite doctrine. With his leadership, the majority of the Egyptian Church fell away from Catholicism and adhered to the heresy.

This state of separation was to endure for more than a thousand years. During the 14th and 15th centuries, attempts were made to bring the Coptic Church closer to Rome; these were without notable or definitive success.

A Long Movement of Resurrection

In the 17th century, the Franciscans managed to group together a few converts and, in 1739, the Coptic Bishop, Athanasius of Jerusalem, who lived in Cairo, joined Catholicism and was appointed Apostolic Vicar of the small community of some 2,000 souls. It was not until the 19th century that this movement gain traction.

In 1879, Leo XIII entrusted the Jesuits with opening the first Coptic Catholic seminary in Egypt. The community at the time was made up of 5,000 to 6,000 faithful at most, including 800 in Cairo. The rest were in Middle and Upper Egypt, mainly around Tahta.

It had at its head a bishop, with the title of Vicar Apostolic, Bishop Bishay, who caused controversy and was brought back to Rome for a long trial. Upon his death in 1887, he would be replaced successively by three Pro-Vicars or Apostolic Visitors without episcopal consecration.

In 1895, Leo XIII created two dioceses, in Minya and in Thebes, and reestablished, for the bishop residing in Cairo, the title of Coptic Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria. Bishop Cyrillus Macaire was the first to enjoy this dignity.

In 1960, there were 80,000 faithful. In 2005, this population was estimated at more than 250,000 worldwide, a small portion living outside of Egypt. Today, the Coptic Catholic Church has seven dioceses, all in Egypt, except that of Cairo. The patriarch has been His Beatitude Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak since 2013.

As for the Coptic Orthodox Church, its patriarchate resides in Alexandria. It has 15,000,000 faithful, spread across 62 dioceses, and in several countries.