More than 2.8K churches legalized in five years in Egypt

CAIRO – 21 December 2023: A total of 2,815 churches have been legalized over the past five years, said Deputy Head of the Committee for Regulating the Conditions of Churches Pastor Michael Anton in comments to Youm7.

He added that the first church was legalized in May of 2018, as per a 2016 law, which gave a one-year deadline for submitting lists of the names of churches and buildings that should be legalized.

The committee meets approximately every two months and a half and is represented by several ministries, including housing, local development, defense, antiquities, and the church [representing the three main churches: Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical], Anton continued.

Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of Mark, had said that the conditions of the Copts in Egypt are currently much better thanks to the Church Building Law, which allows Egyptian Christians to build new churches.

The Cabinet’s decision to legalize the status of churches comes according to 2016's article number 80 of the law regulating building churches.

The Egyptian churches have witnessed a great revival in recent years, and this is seen in President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s instructions to build churches at every residential block.

President Sisi also directed the state to bear the cost of establishing churches of Christian denominations in new cities, besides mosques, schools and nurseries.