Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Minya (Agenzia Fides) - The village of Delga, in the Egyptian governorate of Minya, in the recent past has been the focus of clashes between family clans and violence carried out by fundamentalist Islamist groups, who have caused deaths and forced many Christian families to temporarily leave their homes. For this reason, the Coptic Catholic Diocese of Minya has chosen to promote a number of concrete projects in that area, aimed at promoting the gradual reshaping of the social fabric.
"The projects - explains to Agenzia Fides Anba Botros Fahim Awad Hanna, Coptic Catholic Bishop of Minya - seek to prepare the ground and favor a change of mentality that would eliminate prejudices and closures". A group of forty people, Christians and Muslims, half of them resident in Delga, have revitalized the local committee of the "House of the Egyptian family," the inter-religious liaison body created years ago by the Grand Imam Al Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch as a tool to prevent and mitigate sectarian conflicts, in a time when the upsurge of fundamentalist sectarianism seemed to endanger national unity.
At the moment, the flagship of the projects promoted in Delga is the health unit which opened with the support of Catholic Relief Service, where Christians and Muslims can benefit from medical care and specialist visits.
Besides the program of support for social and inter-religious reconciliation there is also the inauguration of a library open to all, the creation of a dispensary to guarantee the poorest families access to basic necessities and above all, seminar studies on the issues of coexistence, citizenship and peace, attended by young Christians and Muslims.
"On some occasions – says Bishop Botros Fahim to Fides – young Muslims and Christians involved in these initiatives wanted to publicly express the spirit of reconciliation that unites them". (GV) (Agenzia Fides 27/01/2015)
