His Holiness the Pope meets with the priests of social care in the Dioceses of the Maritime Front, Greater Cairo and Alexandria
14 December 2025
Thursday, December 11, 2015 A.M. 2 1742ish.
His Holiness the Pope meets with the priests of social care in the Dioceses of the Maritime Front, Greater Cairo and Alexandria
His Holiness Pope Tawadros II witnessed today Thursday the second meeting of social welfare priests, organized by his Holiness Secretariat for social welfare during the month of December each year.
The meeting was attended by a number of airport fathers, bishops of the diocese and social care priests from the dioceses and pastoral sectors in the Maritime Front, Matrouh, Alexandria, Cairo and Qaloubiya
The meeting will include introductory films about the “Know Your Son” program, which carries the slogan “No one deprives from education”, the partners supporting the social care service, the “Bent Al-Malk” program, which is concerned about covering the costs of girls’ marriage, and finally an introductory video of the one body service performed by the priests of the New Egypt, the Olive, Nasr City, and the New Cities churches. During this year, the Easter Blessing Bag was able to provide to all families enrolled in the republic-wide social welfare program.
The meeting also included a word to His Eminence, Archbishop of Ancient Egypt, and the Episcopal and Social Services, which addressed the activation of the role of Social Welfare and Development Offices in the Dioceses, and during which the Commission of Justice is working very actively and the numbers are increasing but continuously doubling, and the same goes for the amounts of support provided to girls Appetizers on marriage, he pointed out that the Martyr Marmina Monastery in Marriot is in charge of covering the needs of the Justice Committee in Alexandria. Note that His Holiness the Pope alongside the Justice Committee supports the needs of our Sudanese brothers and many cases of cancer patients.
His Holiness demanded to update the data of the families of the Brothers of the Lord, which helps to reach all the necessary cases.
In his speech, the Secretary of His Holiness the Pope for Social Welfare, the Pope’s pastoral activities during the year 2025 saluting His Holiness for his tireless work to serve the people of the Church everywhere. She talks about the King’s Daughter programs, Teach Your Son, One Body, along with the database system and its development, the Social Welfare Secretariat website and affiliate pages.
He noted that 13 thousand blessing bags are distributed every month other than holidays, and that the foods in the bags are carefully selected to improve the health of the family members. It also talks about the development partners and the addition achieved by joining, the issue of creation of care and development offices referring to the activation of 40 development offices in the diocese so far, and that six development churches recently joined the development partners. Sign of the importance of distributing development efforts to meet diverse needs to avoid focusing on one type of needs.
Mrs. Dina Ghbor the CEO of Ghbor Development Foundation also gave a speech to a partner of social welfare service for development.
And a word by the Rev. Luke Maher and the monk Rev. Lazar Al-Maharqi, was about the vision of the Care and Development Committee in the Holy Complex. Engineer Magdi Al-Sharqawi talked about the development of the social welfare system.
And the meeting concluded with the word of his holiness the pope, in which he welcomed the presence, then he reviewed the vision of his holiness since his inauguration, of pastoral work similar to that of textile, which consists of longan and occasional threads that are woven together to become a cohesive cloth, and vertical threads are the pastoral and diocesan sectors that exist throughout Egypt, which serve bishops, priests and servants and have multiple services, All of these together represent longitudinal (vertical) threads that need occasional (horizontal) threads in order for the fabric to integrate and not break, but join together to work as a system.
His holiness pointed out six steps representing these occasional threads, namely:
1 – Organized Rules 2013: In order for work in long lines to integrate, it was necessary to have general regulations that govern and regulate the work of bishops, priests and servants… Etc to avoid the negative impact of personal lust.
2 – Institute of Ecclesiastical Management and Development (2015): The word management is the ecclesiastical expression of administration, an institute that has taken care of preparing cadres of bishops, priests, servants and administrators, to transform the service into an efficient, organized work.
3 – Development Offices: The idea began with the establishment of the Diocese of Public, Social and Residential Services, by St. Pope Cyril VI, who took care of the development, training and rehabilitation, and later development offices were established in the dioceseses, and the diocesan undertaking the process of training and supporting the servant staff in these offices.
4 – Coptic Marmarx Academy (2025): The recently opened to be the umbrella of the University for all that is teaching in the Coptic Orthodox Church, and aims to fine-tun the teaching performance in the Church and is something we are working on gradually.
5 – General Secretariat of Coptic Schools (2025): A new entity with 55 schools in order to work together and communicate with the Ministry of Education to coordinate with them and our schools are open to all Egyptians, and we aim to serve the whole community. His Holiness the Pope stressed the need for all schools to gather and cooperate in order to be strong and influential. He recalled the words of Jesus Christ, “Whoever does not gather together with Me, him is separated” (Matthew 12: 30).
6 – General Secretariat of Coptic Hospitals in Cairo (under foundation): It will become a subsidiary entity for all Coptic hospitals in Cairo.
And conclude: “We combine all efforts to be one system, and Jesus did everything in a system, for the system is the reason for success”