The Coptic Orthodox Church

Denomination·Founded 451 CE·est. ~10 million, and disputed: the church claims 15 million in Egypt, while the state statistics agency CAPMAS puts all Egyptian Christians near 5.7 per cent of the population.

Judaism → Christianity → Oriental Orthodoxy → The Coptic Orthodox Church

The Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of AlexandriaArchiveSaint Takla Haymanot Coptic Orthodox Site

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Story of The Coptic Orthodox Church

The twenty-one on the beach.

In February 2015 Islamic State published a video of twenty-one men in orange jumpsuits beheaded on a Libyan shore; twenty were Egyptian Copts working as labourers, and the twenty-first, Matthew Ayariga, was Ghanaian and would not separate himself from them. The Coptic Synod added them to the Synaxarium within a week. In 2023 the Catholic Church put them in the Roman Martyrology — the first saints the two churches have recognised together since the fifth century.

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Where it is toldThe Synaxarium, and in the icon that hangs in most Coptic churches built since 2015
Who appearsTwenty-one migrant labourers, twenty of them Egyptian and one Ghanaian
What it teachesThat the martyr calendar is not a closed book
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The men were labourers from villages in Minya province who had gone to Libya for work; their families had been sending them money home. After the video appeared, Pope Tawadros II announced their inclusion in the Synaxarium on 20 February 2015, six days after the killings, without the long processes canonisation involves in the Latin church. A church was built for them at al-Our, their home village, and their remains were returned to Egypt in 2018. When Pope Francis added them to the Roman Martyrology in May 2023 he said they were killed for being Christian, not for being Orthodox.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

After consulting with the sister churches of the Oriental Orthodox family, it was decided to suspend the theological dialogue with the Catholic Church.

Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church, statement of 7 March 2024, English translation as published by Aleteia

Quoted here for the record of how quickly the shared canonisation of 2023 was followed by a rupture: the Synod suspended dialogue with Rome three months after the Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans.

The same ground, other faiths

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