The Orthodox world was dismayed recently by persistent reports that the ancient St. Catherine’s monastery, located on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, was threatened with the arbitrary revocation of its autonomous status. To widespread alarm, it was alleged that this venerable institution was to be turned by the Egyptian government into a museum and that the religious community who reside there might be evicted. The thought that in our age of presumed inter-faith conviviality a government could perpetrate such an outrage by decree sent shockwaves not just among Orthodox believers but also men of good will of all creeds who treasure the liberty of religious expression.
Fortunately, the threat to the integrity of St. Catherine’s monastery appears now to be less immediate than, based on fragmentary reports, it initially was thought to be. The monastery’s abolition as an institution of Orthodox Christian worship no longer seems to be imminent. However, the suspicion remains that for tactical reasons that outcome has merely been deferred pending the appearance of more auspicious circumstances. The alarm that was set off several weeks ago may not be entirely false.
St. Catherine’s was built by Byzantine emperor Justinian between 548 and 565 and has the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. Within the Orthodox communion it is fully autonomous. It houses manuscripts and works of religious art of inestimable cultural value.
Over the centuries, the monastery led an uninterrupted and to the outside world barely noted existence in an isolated corner of the Sinai Peninsula. It remained largely undisturbed by the Ottomans as well as the other powers which, succeeding the Byzantines, at various times controlled the peninsula where it is located. Its safety was additionally ensured by a specific disposition by the Prophet Muhammad granting it enhanced protection.
In light of that history, the abruptly manifested interest of the Egyptian government in the remote monastery’s status is particularly puzzling. The matter came to the public’s attention when an Egyptian court ordered the monastery to furnish proof of ownership of the facility, which the monks have occupied for centuries, as a condition for registering it in the land cadastre records which is necessary to confirm the monastery’s status as their property. The demand is somewhat similar to a court in Jerusalem requiring the Jewish religious authorities to furnish written proof of ownership of the Wailing Wall going back to the time of King David or the Islamic Wakf to demonstrate in similar form its ownership of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Though no one genuinely disputes the inherent right of either group to exercise ownership and control over those properties, practical compliance with such a judicial order would be a daunting task for both.
So far the Egyptian government has not made explicit its ultimate intentions with regard to this ancient Christian Orthodox institution whose presence on a remote desert patch of Egyptian territory poses no difficulties for the Egyptian state. Quite possibly, from the standpoint of the current authorities in Cairo the affair is no more than a clumsy bureaucratic attempt to update land registration records. There is, however, also a sense that legal groundwork might be in process of being laid for drastic interference with the status of St. Catherine’s monastery in the future, whether or not at present such a consequence is intended.
It is conceivable that the strong interventions of the Greek government and the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem will dissuade Egypt from further pursuing this matter in a way that would severely damage its reputation. It is worth noting, however, that in light of the expropriation of Orthodox sacred places elsewhere, the commotion focusing on St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai can hardly be dismissed as a paranoid reaction.
After the beginning of the Special Military Operation, the Kiev Caves monastery in the capital of Ukraine, a major Orthodox religious shrine, property of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which is in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, was illegally confiscated by the Kiev authorities and handed over to the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” a canonically unrecognised outfit politically aligned with the Ukrainian regime. That operation was carried out under cover of a bureaucratic technicality remarkably similar to the pretext put forward by the Egyptian court.
A similar fate was inflicted not long ago on another major Orthodox shrine of immense historical and cultural significance, the Hagia Sophia Church in Istanbul, when in 2020 the Turkish government arbitrarily converted it into a mosque. For the preceding hundred years, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and under the secular Turkish state, Hagia Sophia at least enjoyed the neutral status of a museum. It has now been given over to another cult and completely removed from the reach of Orthodox clergy and believers, just as was the Kiev Caves monastery in Ukraine and as it is feared that St. Catherine’s in the Sinai eventually might be.
Within the broad assault on Christianity in the contemporary world, harassment of the Orthodox Christian communion is particularly conspicuous. It ranges from pressure to give up centuries-old practices and conform to secular standards and “European values,” to which the autonomous monastic community on Mount Athos is continuously being subjected, being located in Greece and therefore on European Union territory, to outright violence which is intended to coerce, physically eliminate, and even expel the local Orthodox population. The recent terrorist bombing of St Elijah church in Damascus, Syria, resulting in death and injury to dozens of parishioners, was a shocking example of the more violent approach. The deliberate and systematic targeting by Ukrainian armed forces of Orthodox religious facilities in the Donbas reflects exactly the same perverse mentality.
For the moment there is little that can effectively be done in the defence of tolerance and genuinely human (as opposed to EU and other bogus) “values,” other than to relentlessly call attention and denounce their egregious violations. Those violations are especially odious when they are committed in the sacred domain which pertains to conscience. Governments which engage in such reprehensible conduct should at a minimum be shamed and, whenever possible, their officials should be called to account and vigorously prosecuted.
