The ordination of Coptic priests should be contingent upon the consent of their spouses, Coptic Pope Shenouda III has said in his weekly sermon.
“Wives should also be tested on whether they fully understand the nature of a priest's vocation,” the pope said on Wednesday’s night.
“Priests must be strong; not controlled by their wives,” he added, noting that a weak priest would be unable to adequately carry out his responsibilities.
The pope’s comments came after hundreds of Coptic Christians staged a sit-in last month at St. George Church in the village of Deir Mawas in the Minya Governorate (370 kilometers south of Cairo) to protest what they believed to have been the kidnapping of Camellia Zakher, the wife of a local priest.
Certain Islamic websites posted pictures of Zakher, 23, wearing a veil, claiming that she had voluntarily converted to Islam. Coptic websites, however, claimed she had been abducted against her will.
The state press, meanwhile, quoted an Al-Azhar official as saying Zakher had not converted to Islam.
It later emerged that Zakher had fled her home as a result of a domestic quarrel.
There have been a number of unfounded rumors in recent years about the abduction of Coptic women in Upper Egypt, often as a result of tension between Christian and Muslim communities.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
