Featured Photo: Shangyun Shen, Coptic monks walking on the boulevard in the Monastery of Dayr al-Muharrq.
Before the massive city of Cairo awoke from its slumber, we hopped on the minibus that would eventually take us all the way to the hinterland of Upper Egypt and back. We were embarking on a journey to visit the sites believed to be trodden by the Holy Family some 2000 years ago.
Continue reading A Re-examination of the Holy Family Tradition in Upper Egypt
Dayr al-Garnus is approximately 10 km west of Ishnin al-Nasara. There we will visit the Church of the Holy Virgin and receive a blessing from the water of the Holy Family well. Tradition says the Holy Family quenched their thirst from it and thus blessed it.
Continue reading Dayr al-Garnus
Featured photo: Norbert Schiller, a priest blessed a child and two women at Kom Maria just outside the village of Dayr Abu Hinnis.
The text below is an Egypt Today article from the year 2000, when H.H. Pope Shenouda and President Mubarak were still in power.
Egypt’s oldest churches and monasteries have always attracted many hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year.” The Coptic Orthodox Church, to which 90 percent of Egypt’s Christians belong, has convinced authorities and the public of the flight’s importance, and the Ministry of Tourism has since actively supported religious tourism, publishing a photo book and distributing it worldwide. In the past year dozens of articles have appeared in the Egyptian press about the project, and Nile TV broadcast an awareness-raising documentary during Pope John Paul’s recent visit. The American University in Cairo Press is also publishing a book about the Holy Family.
Continue reading Searching the Route: On the History and Present of the Holy Family Tradition
Holy Family in Egypt 