Copts bid farewell to Pope Shenuda

patriarch for the Middle East’s largest Christian community.
He led the Copts, estimated at 10 percent of Egypt’s population of more than 80 million, for a whole generation, during which the country was hit by a wave of Islamist militancy from which he sought to protect his people.
Tens of thousands of mourners converged on the cathedral, forming a queue that stretched for more than a kilometer, as military police jeeps and armoured personnel carriers lined the road outside.
Shenuda’s body, dressed in formal robes with a golden crown on his head and a gold-knobbed staff cradled on his shoulder, was placed upright on the tall ornate papal throne where it will remain sitting in state until the funeral on Tuesday.
A bishop knelt to one side pressing his head to the throne, as thousands of worshippers in black hoping for a final blessing from their spiritual leader took pictures of Shenuda on their mobile phones, amid tears and wails of grief.
State television aired appeals to the mourners to avoid crowding, reminding them that they could pay their respects until Tuesday.
“It’s a great loss for Egypt,” said Tourism Minister Munir Fakhry Abdelnur, a Copt and a close friend of Shenuda. — AFP.