AFRICA/EGYPT - Lockdown due to Covid-19, Coptic Patriarch Tawadros authorizes the celebration of weddings

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros instituted new rules limiting attendance during wedding ceremonies.
A maximum of four people can participate in the celebration, in addition to the spouses, the priest and the deacon. The wedding ceremony cannot be followed by celebrations and convivial moments, and the spouses - to whom a medical examination is strongly recommended before the rite - will have to dress soberly, renouncing traditional ceremonial clothes.
In recent days, in an interview with the Australian satellite TV channel TEN, Pope Tawadros reiterated that the decision to close churches due to the pandemic, difficult and painful, forced the Copts to renounce the Holy Week rites as well, but it was a necessary choice, aimed at saving people's lives.
In Egypt, the first coronavirus infection was reported across Africa on 14 February. The data provided by the Egyptian authorities reported almost a thousand cases of contagion and less than 350 deaths due to Covid-19 throughout the national territory at the end of April.
Figures that according to various external observers only partially photograph the factual reality. On March 15, the government stopped air traffic, suspended public transportation and ordered schools, restaurants, cafes, mosques and churches to close. The nightly curfew was confirmed on April 27, postponed for an hour during the month of Ramadan to allow Muslims to have the only daily meal, but without authorizing the traditional evening convivial moments that usually close each day of the holy month in which Muslim believers practice fasting. (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 4/5/2020)

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