“The ability to profess one's own creed must be guaranteed to
everyone without exception, and thus also to Christians,” the prefect of
the Congregation for Eastern Churches said during a visit to Egypt.
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, speaking to Catholic Church leaders,
acknowledged the “very difficult present situation” facing the Church in
Egypt. He encouraged clerics to recall that Jesus prepared for his
trials with periods of especially intense prayer and communion with the
Father.
Cardinal Sandri also urged Egyptian Catholics to be mindful of Egypt’s
proud traditions: “the heights of religiousness and culture that it has
known and which must be confirmed in the present and the future: a
culture ever open to the revelation of God.”
During the Year of Faith, he continued, there is a particular call “to
knock at the hearts of tired and indifferent Christians so that they
might rediscover the joy of Christ and return to Him in order to have
true and eternal life."
During his stay in Egypt, Cardinal Sandri presided at the consecration
of a new Catholic Church, dedicated to Our Lady of Peace, at Sharm
el-Sheikh. He met with the country’s Catholic bishops—led by the Coptic
Catholic Patriarch Antonios Naguib—and with the leaders of the Greek
Orthodox Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church.