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Middle East Christians celebrate Easter

Amid reminders of bloodshed, religious followers across region observe holiday

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
Published: April 15, 2017, 10:18pm

CAIRO — On the eve of Christianity’s holiest day, Coptic Christian families filed past armed guards and a metal detector to the chapel beside St. Mark’s Cathedral, where 29 of their loved ones were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomb attack before Christmas. The marble columns still bear large pockmarks gouged out by the explosion.

A week earlier, Islamic State bombers killed 45 people gathered for Palm Sunday at churches to the north in Alexandria and Tanta.

“Death is not far from us,” said Sandra Joseph, 22, a student at local Ain Shams University who helped usher several hundred people in for the service at the Chapel of St. Peter and Paul. “We got used to explosions.”

As they had waited to enter the cathedral’s walled church complex — on edge after the attacks and fatigued by 55 days of fasting for Lent — some worshippers worried aloud about a possible drive-by shooting. Once inside, they felt safer.

Holy Week, which culminates with the celebration of Easter Sunday, recalls Jesus Christ’s rejection and journey down the “via dolorosa,” the sorrowful road, on the way to crucifixion. Across the Middle East this Easter season, Christians are traversing their own difficult path, gathering to worship even as they are attacked and displaced by Muslim extremists.

In Iraq, Christian villages outside Mosul freed from militants remain abandoned, residents unwilling to return for fear they will be killed. In Syria and Jordan, armed guards patrol outside churches where pews sit empty as fearful worshippers stay home. And in Egypt, Coptic Christians face a campaign by Islamic State to attack and displace them on the eve of a visit by Pope Francis on April 28-29 to mend ties with Muslim leaders.

Christians have long been a beleaguered minority in Egypt, 10 percent of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population of more than 92 million. Last Monday, militants fired a rocket at an Israeli border crossing in the northern Sinai region, where they have been battling both security forces and Christian civilians. Seven Christians were killed in February and hundreds displaced.

But the attacks have spread beyond Sinai. There were reports of Christians attacked by a mob during Maundy, or Holy, Thursday prayers in the southern city of Minya, home to the largest Christian population in the country and a tinderbox of sectarian violence.

Explosions in churches here are a fresh horror. A week before the Tanta church was bombed, authorities had found and diffused another explosive at the church. On Wednesday, St. Michael’s Church in Cairo was evacuated after three bombs were discovered inside. The same day, Egyptian authorities claimed to have foiled an attack on a Coptic monastery to the south in Assiut.

But the attacks seem to have galvanized, rather than scared off, many of Egypt’s Christians. About 3,000 people filled St. Mark’s Cathedral and the adjoining chapel Saturday for the service known as the Great Vigil. Church regulars said the crowd at the chapel appeared even larger than usual, with people spilling out into the stone courtyard.

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