Pope: Egypt's Church rejects attacks on Islamic, Christian sanctities
Egypt, Religion, 5/16/2002

Egyptian Patriarch of Alexandria and Saint Mark Diocese Pope Shenouda III said the Egyptian Church rejects any attacks on Islamic or Christian sanctities.

Jews have no respect for the holiness of Islamic or Christian sanctities, or the Church of the Nativity, the Pope told a gathering with members of the Lyons Club Monday night.

The world's, especially the Christian Western world's silence towards the 38-day Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is first and foremost because the issue was considered a political rather than a religious problem, he said.

It was linked to the arrest of the armed Palestinians who barricaded themselves inside the Church, he said.

The Church of the Nativity is a complex of various churches representing various denominations under the Vatican's trusteeship, that is primarily responsible for the Church's protection, he added.

On the term Zionist Christianity, the Pope said Christianity as a religion, cannot accept Zionism, it rejects it and deplores its principles, he said.

The term was fashioned for some Western Christian states which support Israel, and this has started with the British Balfour declaration on the establishment of a Jewish country, he added.

There are a number of political trends that take religion as a cover and produce unacceptable policies, who espouse doctrines closer to Zionist Judaism, he said.

On the conducts of some fanatic Copts abroad Pope Shenouda, said he was keen on conveying, honestly, the state's efforts to protect the national unity and stressing the religious tolerance.

He added that some little incidents had been convoyed exaggeratedly, stressing the necessity that some misconduct and individual accidents had been misused.

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