Gerapetritis heads to Cairo over monastery concerns
Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis is scheduled to visit Cairo on Wednesday for talks with his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelaty, the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Sunday.
He will be joined by officials from the Ministries of Education and Religious Affairs, and Culture and Sports, underscoring the broad scope of the discussions.
The visit follows a recent decision by an Egyptian court declaring the land and infrastructure surrounding the historic Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai to be Egyptian state property. The ruling places the site under the oversight of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
A Greek Foreign Ministry delegation is expected in Cairo on Monday ahead of the ministerial visit to discuss the implications of the court ruling, which has raised concern in Athens about potential restrictions on the monastery’s religious autonomy.
Greek officials fear the decision could lead to the monastery being treated primarily as a museum rather than a functioning place of worship, particularly since only its abbot, Archbishop Damianos, holds Egyptian citizenship.
During a recent visit to Athens by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and the convening of the bilateral Supreme Cooperation Council in May, Egyptian officials assured Greece that the monastery’s status would not be altered.
Gerapetritis’s visit aims to reinforce these assurances and seek a framework that preserves the spiritual and religious character of one of Christianity’s oldest monastic sites.
