Abbot of St Catherine's Monastery on Sinai: the situation is critical

St. Catherine's Monastery on Sinai. Photo: St. Catherine's Monastery

Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, Pharan, and Raithu, who is also the abbot of St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, in an interview with the Greek resource Ekirikas spoke about the critical situation around the ancient monastery.

The 91-year-old hierarch, who has led the monastery for 27 years, reported that for more than ten years, the brotherhood has been forced to defend their rights to the monastic lands in court. The monastery currently houses 18 to 20 monks.

When asked about what will happen after the court's decision on the "eviction" from the monastery, Archbishop Damianos replied that it is "a miscarriage of justice" and explained the background of the conflict.

"In 1980, The government said that in areas where there is no land registry, the owners of the properties should make a declaration and one of the first to make a declaration was the Monastery, for everything, such as for small gardens, for small churches, in total we should hand over 71 files and they even gave us a note that they had received them," the hierarch said.

He continued: "We were waiting for the Commission to come and recognize the owner of this land and while they gave ownership to others who had more and larger pieces of land, we did not receive it. So, after twenty years, the Egyptian state came and told us that there are many things, that it is this way, that it is that way, and of course it gave us nothing. It tells us that you have no right to have anything, you are young, while we have been residents of Sinai here since the sixth century."

The Archbishop also noted the influence of external factors: "We fell into riots then with the incidents that occurred with the fanatical Muslims and they began to see us as occupiers, that we bought these lands as many did who bought lands completely recently and they are illegal."

"On the one hand, they are holy places and are visited by people who come to Sinai and the Egyptian government benefits, but they do not want to recognize them as our lands," emphasized Archbishop Damianos.

The issue has attracted attention at the highest state level. Egyptian President al-Sisi and Greek Prime Minister reached an agreement on the monastery's fate, but Egyptian officials on the ground are making completely different demands.

Last week, a representative of the Archbishop met with Greek Foreign Minister Georgios Gerapetritis to discuss the crisis situation.

When we asked him what he planned to do from now on, Archbishop Damianos replied that "lately, in this situation, we have started to seem annoyed and say either give us a solution or we close the Monastery".

However, the Archbishop emphasized that the monks do not want to take things to extremes: "But we never did that, we did not want to close the Monastery and cause a disturbance and spoil the entire effort of international tourism, and we did not want the Egyptians to be wronged."

When we asked him where the issue stands at the moment, he said: "The Egyptians are trying to downplay it, they say they love the Monastery, but in reality they are suffocating it," while emphasizing that the "Egyptians did not want the issue to be made public, but they themselves brought it out and we are defending ourselves. It is a big issue, an international issue."

Earlier, the UOJ reported that the Jerusalem Patriarchate called on Egypt to preserve the monastery on Sinai.

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