Coptic Christians of Egypt, apart from electing a Pope, said they are experiencing the worst persection of their group in their nearly 2,000-year history, according to the CBS segment 60 Minutes.
According to the show, Coptic Christians never had it easy in Egypt. The group has been consistently persecuted and discriminated by Egypt's Mulsim Majority. At one point, Coptic Christians were hoping for change after the Arab Spring revolution only to realize that persecutions will increase. One reason for the persecution is that Coptic Christians had supported the overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood rule. They earned the ire of Muslims when they sided with the military, a price so high it's costing them now.
At the time the 60 minutes segment was being shot, a public ceremony was taking place in Cairo's grand cathedral. It was the first papal election in 41 years.
Copts are Orthodox Christians similar to the Greeks and Russians, but they differ they have a pope. Unlike the papal election in the Vatican in which a conclave of cardinals choose who will be the next pope, the Copts' pope is chosen by a boy child.
The boy's in a blindfold and puts his hand inside a crystal chalice that contains the names of three candidates. Coptic Christians believe that the boy, like Christ, is pure and inspired by the diving, the segment said.
The boy chose Tawadros II, a 61 year-old pharmacist turned monk and the 118th pope of Coptic Christians that goes as far back as the 1st century.
There's not much awareness to Egypt's Christian past. What most people know is that during the persecution of the baby Jesus, the holy family escaped and fled to Egypt. The segment showed one chapel of the Abu Serga Church and said that local traditions suggest the carpenter's family lived.
"That's why Christians from all over Egypt come to Coptic Cairo to pray. To them, the Abu Serga church is as sacred as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem or the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem," Febe Armanios, an expert on Copts from Middlebury College, said in the interview. "But while foreigners used to flock to Egypt to see what the pharaohs left behind -- very few came here -- or even knew about Egypt's Christian past."
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