EGYPT: 'Building a future for my son and yours'

Marie-Claude Lalonde is the National Director of Aid to the Church in Need Canada. Here she reports back on her visit to Egypt in October to assess the situation facing Christians in the aftermath of the 25th January Revolution.

For the last year and a half, Egypt has made regular headlines because of clashes between Christians and Muslims. The country also hit front page during the Arab Spring early on this year. The situation of Christians – as well as of other minorities – continues to deteriorate.

Nevertheless, this cannot uniquely be seen as inter-confessional violence, as the roots of these conflicts are often found in the relationships between large families, unfounded rumours, the discriminatory rules of State, political issues, etc.

Despite these sad episodes of violence, life continues with school, work, agriculture, commerce…

In Dairut, a small village situated on the west coast of the Nile and 350 km south of Cairo, the Sisters of Saint Ann – an Italian congregation – hold a dispensary. They treat and counsel their patients without taking notice of their religion. For that matter, the majority of their patients are Muslim women with their children.

250 sick people, sometimes more, present themselves every day, preferring the Sisters’ dispensary to the public hospital. We are told that the care is better and as for the cost? One of the Sisters on site tells us, “They give what they can.”

A Sister tends to a young patient at the clinic in Dairut, Egypt

They treat just about anything, but particularly eye infections caused by dust and also many burns. There is a lack of hygiene as well that often delays the healing of wounds.

To the eyes of a stranger, burns are not habitually what come to mind on a list of treatments most frequently dispensed by a medical clinic. One Sister says: “Here, the children run everywhere. They are not careful and fall in fires… or there is boiling water for tea.”

Later on, she continues and explains that an angry man may very well throw boiling water on his spouse or his child. There is a lot of domestic violence. She concludes by saying “Men’s behaviour here is very hard with their women.” That is why, along with treating, the Sisters also educate.

In the cramped areas that serve as examination rooms, and in the hallways, they hang posters about democracy in the home. It’s a way to introduce the subject of relationships between men and women. They also distribute pens with slogans of tolerance inscribed on them: We will grow hand in hand; We are building a future for your son and for mine, etc. They hope that these ideas will do their work.

Tending to a patient at the clinic in Dairut, Egypt

As if the task was not already sufficiently large, they go into the streets to find the sick who otherwise would receive no treatment at all. They also lead a campaign against female circumcision in four villages. They tell us it is a reassuring fact to see that the mentality is changing and young couples are no longer doing it.

These three Sisters, and the nurses that help them, represent an element of change and of social stability. Through their attitude and their openness, they show that living together is possible, that democracy has its place and that, most importantly, all people have a right to dignity.

EGYPT: Changing the world, one 'tweet' at a time

Marie-Claude Lalonde is the National Director of Aid to the Church in Need Canada. Here she reports back on her visit to Egypt in October to assess the situation facing Christians in the aftermath of the 25th January Revolution.

Father Henri Boulad is an Egyptian-Lebanese Jesuit, and lives in Alexandria … that is, when he is not travelling around the world. He is now 80 years old, but rest assured, he is very much of our times. Well known for his straight-talk, it is with conviction that he speaks to us of the world, and of his vision of the world.

Interviewed in Cairo last October 21 by Aid to the Church in Need, Father Henri Boulad expressed his hopes and his fears for the future of Egypt as well as that of Christians who have been present there since the era of Saint Mark, the apostle.

At the outset, he recalls that the Coptic problem is not a new one in Egypt, and since Nasser’s rule (1952) Christians have felt increased discrimination. On the legal side of things, for example, Christians must obtain - not without difficulty - a permit to build a church; whereas Muslims can erect mosques just about anywhere without so much as a permit. There is also discrimination on a regular basis in situations involving obtaining jobs or buying property.

“What is new within these events is that not only are Christians protesting, but they are defending themselves against the violence done to them,” declares Father Boulad. He adds that since the events in Maspero (Cairo), last October 9 (leaving more than 25 dead and hundreds injured), the army lost its credibility. “We had the impression that they [the army] straight-out took position against the Christians!”

Father Henri Boulad, an Egyptian-Lebanese Jesuit living in Alexandria 

According to the priest, radical Muslims are now quite visible, which was not the case before the fall of Mubarak because he would track them. The radicals speak the language of violence, whereas the more liberal groups, who were at the source of the revolution, are “silenced through threats […] whether they are Muslims or Christians,” says Father Boulad. There are actually many who think that the revolution was hijacked along the way by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists (radicals).

“It is all for show; believing that the elections will be free,” believes Father Boulad. Egypt, he says, is not ripe for democracy. Only the liberals would be. But they are far too weak in relation to other groups for the time being.

“The passage through Islam is incontrovertible and it will last a long time. […] We must brace ourselves for a haemorrhaging,” he analyses with regard to the exodus of Christians from the Middle East. “The West does not care at all for Christians […] what interests the West, is their economical and political strategy, one concern, that’s all, period.” Later on in this interview he will add “guilt by omission; kills me.”

A burnt out car in the Maspero region of Cairo, Egypt, where 25 were killed
and hundreds injured when protesters came under attack in October 2011.

Being more philosophical, he adds, this necessary passage, as he calls it, will be resolved through cultural and educational means and it will be a matter of a long process because it supposes an evolution in mentalities.

When we ask him what we can do, he says: “You must speak, fight, struggle – what you are already doing – what they continue to do with or without Facebook, in the press. […] I believe in the Internet, in Facebook and in Twitter.

“I believe in the strength of the Holy Spirit […] I am a religious priest, a Jesuit, a believer to the bone, and I believe that the strength of the Holy Spirit will one day be stronger than all these channels, but… but…

“I believe the Gospel will have the last word, and the power of truth along with the power of charity will have the last word. But battles in the meantime, and unravelling in the meantime, disillusionment in the meantime – but I believe … I count on it ... I believe in the strength of the Holy Spirit!”

And, the energetic Jesuit added with conviction that his life-long maxim has been, “To change the world!”