Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral

Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral

Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Abbasiyya, Cairo, is the mother church of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the seat of the Coptic Pope — the spiritual leader of approximately 10–15 million Coptic Christians in Egypt and the diaspora worldwide. Consecrated in 1968 by Pope Cyril VI in the presence of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie, the cathedral is a large modern building capable of accommodating several thousand worshippers, and it serves as the ceremonial and administrative center of the oldest Christian denomination in Africa.

The cathedral is built in a Byzantine-influenced style, with a large dome, decorative arches, and an interior richly appointed with icons, marble, mosaics, and ornate wooden furnishings. The most sacred element of the cathedral is the relics of Saint Mark the Evangelist, traditionally credited with founding the Coptic Church in Alexandria around 42 CE. A portion of these relics — specifically the head of Saint Mark — was returned to Cairo from Venice in 1968 by Pope Paul VI, after having been in Italy since 828 CE, when Venetian merchants removed it from Alexandria. The return of the relic was a diplomatic and ecumenical act of historic significance and coincided with the cathedral’s consecration.

The cathedral is the site of the enthronement ceremonies of each new Coptic Pope, the most significant of which in recent memory was the election and enthronement of Pope Tawadros II in November 2012.

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria claims to have been founded by Saint Mark the Evangelist in Alexandria around 42 CE, making it one of the oldest Christian institutions in the world. For the first nineteen centuries of the church’s history, the patriarchal seat was in Alexandria. The relocation of the patriarchal cathedral to Cairo — where the majority of Egypt’s Christian population had concentrated — was a 20th-century institutional development reflecting modern demographics.

The original relics of Saint Mark were taken from Alexandria to Venice in 828 CE by two Venetian merchants who hid them in a cargo of pork to avoid detection by Muslim customs officials. The relics were installed in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, where they remained for 1,140 years. Pope Paul VI’s return of a portion of the relics to Cairo in 1968 was a significant gesture of Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical relations and was received by the Coptic Church as a partial restoration of a stolen patrimony.

The cathedral became the site of a tragic event in December 2016, when a bombing attack on a chapel within the cathedral compound killed 25 people and injured dozens during a Sunday service — one of the most devastating attacks on the Coptic Christian community in modern Egyptian history.