Following a private meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, the Coptic Pope, received the Primates of the Anglican Communion at the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in Alexandria on Saturday evening, 31 January. The Primates are meeting in Alexandria in the latest of their series of regular meetings.
In thanking Pope Shenouda for his warm welcome and hospitality the Archbishop of Canterbury drew attention to the significance of meeting together in the city where many of the universal doctrines of the Christian faith were formed and where the seeds of the Christian monastic movement had been sown in the fourth century.
Pope Shenouda welcomed the Primates. Bishops, he said, had a special responsibility to guide their people in the path of holiness. Engaging with the young was particularly important. The Coptic Church in Cairo alone was providing Sunday school education to between 30 and 40,000 children. He also gave an account of the resurgence of the Coptic monasteries in Egypt. There were more than
twenty communities with over 100 monks each.
