AFRICA/EGYPT - Patriarch Tawadros visits the Ethiopian "sister Church"

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II left Cairo on Friday, September 25 for a five-day visit to Ethiopia. During his stay Pope Tawadros will participate in the solemn liturgical celebrations officiated by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in honor of the Holy Cross, and will also visit the sanctuaries of Lalibela, the ancient site of Ethiopian Christianity.
The trip of Pope Tawadros in Ethiopian land is very significant both for the Church and for the relations between Egypt and Ethiopia. Tawadros reciprocates the visit made last January in Egypt by Abuna Mathias I, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (see Fides 17/01/2015). On that occasion, the Primate of the Church of Ethiopia was also received by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and by the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed al Tayyeb. During talks with the President and other political authorities, Abuna Mathias had discussed the question of the future of the dam of the Great Revival, the massive hydraulic work on the Nile which was begun by Ethiopia and criticized by Egypt. Egyptians fear that the Ethiopian project of the large dam may have negative impact on the volume of the waters of the Nile so far available to the economy and the needs of the population.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church was jurisdictionally bound to the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria until 1959, when it was recognized as autocephalous Church from Coptic Patriarch Cyril VI. During his visit to Egypt, the Ethiopian Patriarch repeated the words of Jesus according to whom man cannot separate what God has put together, usually related to marriage, and had applied it to the relations between the two Churches, reaffirming the full unity of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Coptic Church. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 26/09/2015)

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