Egypt: Coptic Church moves toward picking new pope

CAIRO (AP) A council of Egypt's Coptic Christians voted on Monday in a process that will lead to the selection of a new pope for the ancient church, as the community struggles to assert its identity and rights in a rising tide of Islamism that has left many Copts fearful for their future.

The succession follows the March death of the charismatic Pope Shenouda III at the age of 88, after 40 years as the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The congregation represents the majority of Egypt's Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 83 million people.

About 2,400 clergymen, community leaders and Egyptian Coptic notables gathered in the main Coptic cathedral in Cairo for the voting. They were choosing a short list of three candidates from a field of five monks and auxiliary bishops.

By late Monday, acting Pope Pachomios said more than 93 percent of the council voted, and selected Bishop Raphael, 54, once an aide to Shenouda; Bishop Tawadros, 59, an aide to the acting pope, and Father Raphael Ava Mina, the oldest among them at 70, a monk in a monastery near Alexandria and a student of the pope who preceded Shenouda.

The final selection of the new pope will take place in a ceremony Sunday, when the three names are put in a box and a blindfolded child picks one out, a step believed to reflect God's will in the choice. The acting pope asked Copts to fast for three days to aid the selection of the Church's 118th pope.

Egypt's Coptic Christians have long complained of discrimination by the state and the country's Muslim majority. Clashes with Muslims have occasionally broken out, sparked by church construction, land disputes or Muslim-Christian love affairs.

The new election comes during a shift in Christian attitudes on their relation to the state. For years, Christians largely relied on the Church to secure some protection for their rights, using Shenouda's close relationship with longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

With Mubarak's ouster in a popular uprising last year and Shenouda's death, many have been emboldened to act beyond the Church's hold and participate more directly in the nation's politics to demand rights, better representation and freedom of worship. Signs of rebellion over the close relation with the state had already begun to surface before the uprising in January 2011.

"If Egyptian Copts are represented by the Church, they will be considered second-class citizens, because they are subjects of the Church first before they are subjects of the state," said Yousef Sidhom, the editor of Egypt's main Coptic newspaper. "Many have mocked this, saying how can the Copts demand citizenship rights while accepting to remain under the umbrella of the Church in the face of the state."

The more vocal stance among Copts, particularly the youth who organized into movements independent of the Church, has come with the rising power of Islamist groups long repressed under Mubarak, and after a series of violent attacks against churches and Christians.

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Egypt: Coptic Church moves toward picking new pope