Coptic Church hosts global celebration of 17 centuries on Nicaea Council
The Coptic Orthodox Holy Synod issued a statement on hosting a global celebration of 17 centuries on Nicaea Council.
The statement said that the Coptic Orthodox Church will be hosting the International Conference on the World Celebration of 17 centuries on the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325AD.
The Synod welcomed the event within the framework of the Coptic Church's role and responsibilities in the world ecumenical movement, in honour and veneration of the Church fathers among whom are Pope Alexandros, the 19th Patriarch of Alexandria, who participated in the Nicaea Council; and Pope Athanasius the Apostolic, the 20th Patriarch from 328 to 373, together with other heroes who safeguarded the orthodox faith.
The conference will be held in October 2025 under the auspices of the World Council of Church's (WCC) Faith and Order Committee.
It is the first time, the statement said, that such a conference is hosted by an Oriental Orthodox Church, and is the sixth to be held during the last 100 years. The first was held in 1927 in Lausanne, Switzerland; the second in 1937 Edinburgh, Scotland; the third in 1952 in Lund, Sweden; the fourth in 1963 in Montreal, Canada; and the fifth in 1993 in Santiago, Spain.
'In this regard,' the statement read, 'the [Coptic Orthodox] Holy Synod would like to stress that the conference is not a theological dialogue on Christian doctrines, but an opportunity to present research theses on the Council of Nicaea as a model in the face of heresies facing the Christian faith, given that the Council of Nicaea was a 'historical moment', when the Christian Church in the world was one.
'This means that the conference represents an academic opportunity in which research papers express the views of their writers, be those priests, professors or scholars. Therefore, the conference will not issue any resolutions, decisions, agreements, signatures, or even recommendations, but it may issue media statements only.
'It is known that our Coptic Orthodox Church has been a member of the World Council of Churches since 1954, and is also a member of regional and local church councils. More than 300 Churches and communities from more than 100 countries are members in the World Council of Churches. Eastern churches account for only 15 per cent of the members, while the proportion of Western churches amounts to 85 per cent.
'Our Church's hosting of this world event comes within the framework of its effective and strong role in spiritual work and strengthening of all Christian Churches inside and outside Egypt, because we are not isolated from the world. Rather, we have Coptic churches and monasteries in more than 60 countries in the world, and we entertain loving relations and communication with the other Churches present in these countries. We participate in theological dialogue to explain and present the orthodox faith on the basis of the glorious history of our Church and upright faith, and we always pray for unity of faith and an end to Church division.
'Over the last few years, we succeeded in hosting important Church events such as the 12th General Assembly of the Middle East Council of Churches in 2022, the meeting of representatives of the Orthodox Churches in the world in 2024, the meeting of the Patriarchy of the Oriental Orthodox Churches in the Middle East in 2025, and other international conventions.'
The statement concluded with prayer for the great upcoming canonical event, to be crowned with success and fruitfulness. Comments
comments
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CairoScene
21-06-2025
- CairoScene
This Southern Saudi City Is Where Faith Was Forged in Fire
This Southern Saudi City Is Where Faith Was Forged in Fire In the far south of Saudi Arabia, where the mountains taper into a great and scorching plain, there is a city that appears almost by accident, wedged between the highlands of Asir and the empty immensity of the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter—Najran. There, the road curves through flat-bellied valleys and dips into thick groves of date palms. Occasionally the land flashes a scatter of low stone buildings or mud-brick towers—and then nothing again. Najran is not a large city, nor a particularly loud one. Its charm comes from its ability to carry an old weight, the kind one finds underfoot, in the grain of the walls, and in the dusted glaze of the pottery unearthed from its soil. People have passed through here for over four thousand years: traders with incense caravans, missionaries on foot, kings with gold rings heavy on their hands. It is not the end of the world, though it may evoke the sensation of being at the edge of it. South of modern Najran, behind a fenced archaeological site and a flat expanse of sand, sit the crumbling outlines of Al-Ukhdūd. Not ruins in the traditional sense—there are no tall columns or sprawling mosaics in sight—but a boxy, haunted emptiness. The walls, square and thick, stretch to about 220 meters in one direction, 230 in the other. They enclose a city that has been cut and re-cut into the land: streets, cemeteries, shattered foundations, and the curved edges of watchtowers now melting into the earth. Bronze objects have been found here. Glass beads. Pottery that still holds the burn of its last fire. But it is not the artifacts that give Al-Ukhdūd its charge. It is something darker. To find it, one need only to turn to its history. Sometime in the early 6th century CE, the Himyarite King Dhu Nuwas is said to have carried out a massacre here. Christians, by the hundreds, burned alive in a trench—"the People of the Ditch," as they are remembered in the Qur'an. The earth, disturbed and disturbed again by archaeologists, gives back layers of history that don't align so much as collide: pre-Islamic temples, Christian chapels, Islamic inscriptions etched long after. There is no single story to Najran. Just a chorus of ghosts. Long before the Prophet Muhammad received the Christian delegation from Najran—one of the first recorded interfaith encounters in the region—the city had been a pilgrimage site. A Kaaba once stood here. Not the Kaaba, but a local one, sacred and central to the communities that worshiped before Islam took hold. Dhu Nuwas razed it. The Aksumites, Christian invaders from across the Red Sea, built it again. Religion in Najran has never been fixed. It has changed hands, changed names, left scars. But the memory of faith here is thick. It cannot be washed away by time. In the Old City, the buildings stand pressed together, cautious and close like villagers around a fire. Three and four stories high, made of clay and wood, they lean slightly inward. The walls are a deep mud colour, flecked with sun-whitened wood. Latticework windows let in light but guard against heat. Doors—some carved, some simple—bear marks from decades of use. Narrow streets run between them, dusty veins that open onto courtyards, hidden rooms, stairwells. Most of these houses are watchful. They've seen too much to be otherwise. There are two palaces worth noting. Al-Aan Palace, perched on a low hill, watches over Najran with a stern and quiet face. Built in 1688, it's made from the same earthen palette as the homes below it but stands apart, four stories tall, its edges sharp against the horizon. From its roof, one can see the whole valley, the way a falcon might. The second, Emarah Palace, is less dramatic but no less important. Built in 1944 as a seat of government, its thick mud walls and squat towers remind visitors that even bureaucracy, here, has a kind of architectural grace. But Najran is not only a city of buildings and ruins. Drive out past the far edges of town, where the hills begin to rise and the brush grows sparse, and you reach Bir Hima. A rock art complex now recognized by UNESCO, it spreads thinly across the landscape with thousands of inscriptions, petroglyphs, and ancient doodles carved into the stone. The earliest date back to 7,000 BCE. Camels, warriors, ibexes, rituals. The scripts—Musnad, Thamudic, Aramaic, early Arabic—layer over one another like graffiti in a stairwell, each one a mark of presence. This is where stories were first scratched into permanence. Where someone, long before modern language, tried to say: 'I was here.' Today, Najran balances uneasily between past and present. Its museum—a regional institution filled with archaeological finds and interpretive displays—tries to thread the pieces together. The restorers patch the palaces. The scholars take notes. And yet, some buildings still crumble. Some roads still lead nowhere. Preservation is never perfect. But it is something. A gesture toward remembering and not letting the layers be lost. What makes Najran feel so different is not that it is old—many cities are old—but that it remembers. Even its silence feels crowded. With merchants from Yemen. With missionaries from Ethiopia. With kings, prophets, and poets. With the heat of the ditch and the prayers of the faithful. It is a city on a border, not just of nations, but of faiths, climates, and time itself.
Watani
10-06-2025
- Watani
Coptic Church hosts global celebration of 17 centuries on Nicaea Council
The Coptic Orthodox Holy Synod issued a statement on hosting a global celebration of 17 centuries on Nicaea Council. The statement said that the Coptic Orthodox Church will be hosting the International Conference on the World Celebration of 17 centuries on the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325AD. The Synod welcomed the event within the framework of the Coptic Church's role and responsibilities in the world ecumenical movement, in honour and veneration of the Church fathers among whom are Pope Alexandros, the 19th Patriarch of Alexandria, who participated in the Nicaea Council; and Pope Athanasius the Apostolic, the 20th Patriarch from 328 to 373, together with other heroes who safeguarded the orthodox faith. The conference will be held in October 2025 under the auspices of the World Council of Church's (WCC) Faith and Order Committee. It is the first time, the statement said, that such a conference is hosted by an Oriental Orthodox Church, and is the sixth to be held during the last 100 years. The first was held in 1927 in Lausanne, Switzerland; the second in 1937 Edinburgh, Scotland; the third in 1952 in Lund, Sweden; the fourth in 1963 in Montreal, Canada; and the fifth in 1993 in Santiago, Spain. 'In this regard,' the statement read, 'the [Coptic Orthodox] Holy Synod would like to stress that the conference is not a theological dialogue on Christian doctrines, but an opportunity to present research theses on the Council of Nicaea as a model in the face of heresies facing the Christian faith, given that the Council of Nicaea was a 'historical moment', when the Christian Church in the world was one. 'This means that the conference represents an academic opportunity in which research papers express the views of their writers, be those priests, professors or scholars. Therefore, the conference will not issue any resolutions, decisions, agreements, signatures, or even recommendations, but it may issue media statements only. 'It is known that our Coptic Orthodox Church has been a member of the World Council of Churches since 1954, and is also a member of regional and local church councils. More than 300 Churches and communities from more than 100 countries are members in the World Council of Churches. Eastern churches account for only 15 per cent of the members, while the proportion of Western churches amounts to 85 per cent. 'Our Church's hosting of this world event comes within the framework of its effective and strong role in spiritual work and strengthening of all Christian Churches inside and outside Egypt, because we are not isolated from the world. Rather, we have Coptic churches and monasteries in more than 60 countries in the world, and we entertain loving relations and communication with the other Churches present in these countries. We participate in theological dialogue to explain and present the orthodox faith on the basis of the glorious history of our Church and upright faith, and we always pray for unity of faith and an end to Church division. 'Over the last few years, we succeeded in hosting important Church events such as the 12th General Assembly of the Middle East Council of Churches in 2022, the meeting of representatives of the Orthodox Churches in the world in 2024, the meeting of the Patriarchy of the Oriental Orthodox Churches in the Middle East in 2025, and other international conventions.' The statement concluded with prayer for the great upcoming canonical event, to be crowned with success and fruitfulness. Comments comments
See - Sada Elbalad
24-05-2025
- See - Sada Elbalad
New Details on Titan Submarine Implosion Revealed
Rana Atef Two years ago, the implosion of the Titan submarine took place. However, the full image of the causes of the implosion is still being investigated. Yesterday, new evidence released by the US Coast Guard revealed the final moments of the deep-sea voyage. The implosion took the lives of five people aboard. This footage captures the moment the disaster made itself known. On the morning of June 18, 2023, Wendy Rush, OceanGate's director and wife of Stockton Rush, sat before monitors on the support ship Polar Prince, joined by mission specialist Gary Foss. They were tracking the Titan as it descended into the North Atlantic, toward the wreck of the RMS Titanic. At precisely 9:17 a.m. Eastern Time, as the submersible reached 3,300 meters, a muffled thump echoed through the control room. 'What was that bang?' Wendy asked, the tension in her voice unmistakable, captured in footage now made public by the Marine Board of Investigation on May 22, 2025. Investigators believed that the thump was the sound of Titan's implosion finally reaching the ocean's surface—an eerie acoustic signature of a vessel that had, in all likelihood, already been lost. Moments later, a text came through from the submersible: 'Dropped two weights.' It was a standard message—jettisoning ballast to alter buoyancy—but it would become one of Titan's final transmissions. Shortly after that brief flicker of hope, the digital silence resumed. Contact was lost. Model reconstructions reviewed by investigators confirm what the world had feared in the days following the disappearance: the Titan had imploded approximately 90 minutes into its descent, killing all five occupants instantly. Among them were Stockton Rush; British billionaire Hamish Harding; French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. Thirty minutes prior to the implosion, there had been signs of malfunction. As the Titan reached 2,178 meters, the surface team asked if the vessel was still visible on navigation. The reply was cryptic: 'Yes, lost system and chat settings.' At 2,288 meters, a final message came in: 'All good here.' Then—nothing. In a statement released on June 22, 2023, OceanGate acknowledged the loss: 'These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.' For Wendy Rush, the tragedy was layered with personal loss. A leader in her own right within OceanGate, she had dedicated years to supporting missions that pushed the boundaries of marine exploration. Now, her husband's legacy is tangled with a tragedy that continues to echo in boardrooms, courtrooms, and family homes. read more Gold prices rise, 21 Karat at EGP 3685 NATO's Role in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict US Expresses 'Strong Opposition' to New Turkish Military Operation in Syria Shoukry Meets Director-General of FAO Lavrov: confrontation bet. nuclear powers must be avoided News Iran Summons French Ambassador over Foreign Minister Remarks News Aboul Gheit Condemns Israeli Escalation in West Bank News Greek PM: Athens Plays Key Role in Improving Energy Security in Region News One Person Injured in Explosion at Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid News Egypt confirms denial of airspace access to US B-52 bombers News Ayat Khaddoura's Final Video Captures Bombardment of Beit Lahia News Australia Fines Telegram $600,000 Over Terrorism, Child Abuse Content Arts & Culture Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's $4.7M LA Home Burglarized Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Sports Neymar Announced for Brazil's Preliminary List for 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers News Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly Inaugurates Two Indian Companies Arts & Culture New Archaeological Discovery from 26th Dynasty Uncovered in Karnak Temple Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War Arts & Culture Zahi Hawass: Claims of Columns Beneath the Pyramid of Khafre Are Lies
