The Franciscans in Egypt: Small minority in service of dozens of Christian institutions

A five-day pilgrimage was performed to Mount Moses and Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai on July 26-30 by a group of Franciscans to seek a period of silence and meditation and discover the will of God in human life at these holy sites in Sinai.

Mount Moses is believed to be the sacred Mount Sinai where God spoke to Prophet Moses and sent him the Ten Commandments, as is narrated in the Torah, Bible and Quran.

Mount Moses and Saint Catherine's Monastery were chosen for this year’s “Franciscan March”, as the Franciscans have been organizing such trips of pilgrimage to the holy Christian sites in Egypt, where pilgrims have been visiting since the fourth century, according to Father Milad Shehata, director of the Franciscan Cultural Center in Cairo.

The Franciscans are a group of Christians who belong to the Catholic Church; however, this group has their own different teachings, set forth by its Italian founder, Saint Francis of Assisi, in 1208.

One year earlier, Francis began his sainthood by giving up all he owned to his father, even his clothes, and lived next to San Damiano Cross Church in Italy, which was destroyed at that time, so he restored it. His main ideology included giving up all worldly objects like gold, silver, etc., according to the official website of the Coptic Catholic Patriarchate of Alexandria.

In 1210, Saint Francis got papal approval in Rome to evangelize his teachings. In the following year, at the request of a young woman named Clare, Francis founded the Second Franciscan Order, which is a congregation for women.

Franciscans in Egypt

In 1219, Francis came to Egypt and met Sultan Al-Malik Al-Kamil, the fourth Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt, in the city of Damietta, where they held the first dialogue between the Christian and Islamic religions. The sultan granted Francis written permission to visit the holy places in Palestine, where he established the Franciscan Province of the Holy Land.

The spirituality of Saint Francis is focused on caring for the poor and working on development, peace and love, according to the Church. 

The number of Franciscans in Egypt has reached 50 friars, who “take care of 30 churches, run ten schools, a shelter for the blind in Alexandria, an orphanage house in Mokattam (Cairo), the Great Catechetical School in El-Omraniya Monastery in Giza and the Small Catechetical School in Kafr El-Dawar of Beheira in Egypt’s Delta, according to a book by Hegumen Helmy Yacoub and published on the Saint Takla website.

The number of Franciscan friars around the globe has reached 13,000 in 119 countries, said director of the Great Catechetical School in El-Omraniya Monastery in Giza Milad Goda in an interview with El Fagr newspaper on December 29, 2021.

Egypt's Franciscans offer a number of spiritual services to foreign and Egyptian visitors. These services include praying in the Coptic rite and praying in the Western European rite in all languages. They also provide hosting places for individuals and groups to perform spiritual exercises, Al-Bawaba News reported on July 27, 2018.

The Franciscans in Egypt also serve many churches, such as the Monastery and Shrine of the Virgin in Deir Dronka, the Manfalut Church in Assiut, the churches of Nag Hammadi, Farshout, Qena, Al-Tawairat, and other churches and monasteries in several governorates, particularly in Upper Egypt. They have 33 churches and monasteries nationwide, while the Franciscans of Jerusalem have three monasteries in Cairo, according to the official website of the Catholic Church of Alexandria.