SW News: After two years, for the first time, Egyptian Coptic Christians en masse made a pilgrimage to Israel to observe Holy Week and celebrate Easter in places linked to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This time, there were 4,000 Egyptian believers in the Holy Land to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord as the authorities eased pandemic curbs and threw open the nation to pilgrims and visitors.

For decades, Egyptian Coptic believers were barred from visiting Israel because of the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now, once again, tour operators in Egypt have started organizing Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land by ensuring compliance with the COVID protocol. Egyptian authorities allow pilgrims to undertake the pilgrimage only if they are aged above 40 and have received both doses of the Coronavirus vaccine. However, such curbs have prevented more Copts in Egypt from visiting Israel.

In 1979, an earlier ban on Egyptian Copts visiting Israel was strictly imposed by the then Patriarch Pope Shenouda. This was done to show solidarity with the Muslim community and the Arab world following the annexation of Jerusalem by Israel in 1967. He did not change his position even after relations were normalized between Egypt and Israel. This ban was not formally lifted even after his death in 2012.

However, winds of change started to blow in 2014 when less than a hundred Egyptian believers went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The numbers began to surge after Patriarch Tawadros II, who succeeded Pope Shenouda, made a trip to Jerusalem in November 2015 to attend the funeral of Archbishop Abraham, leader of the local Coptic Orthodox community.

It is estimated that there were 9.5 million Coptic believers in Egypt in 2019 although the Orthodox Church claims that the number is much more. There is also a large Coptic diaspora in the West. In the Holy City of Jerusalem, the Copts have properties including the Monastery and Church of Saint Anthony, Church of Saint Helen, Convent and Church of Saint George the Roman, Deir el-Sultan Monastery, and the Chapel of the Virgin Mary that is located inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.