Interview

Coptic Church

Creed

Egypt

Freedom of Belief

Middle East

Monastic life

S&U interviews

16 February 2024

9 min read

An Archbishop’s life: monasteries, martyrs and media

Archbishop Angaelos, the leader of the Coptic Church in the UK, is one of the most respected and recognisable Christian leaders in the UK and around the world. He shares his journey and that of the Middle East's largest church in conversation with Belle Tindall and Graham Tomlin.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

An archbishop wearing a black hat and robes stands next to a new building's plaque, while King Charles, wearing a suit stands the other side holding a mic.

The archbishop with King Charles at the opening of a Coptic Church centre.

Archbishop Angaelos, the first Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London, tells Graham Tomlin and Belle Tindall what life is like as a Coptic Orthodox monk, what makes this church so distinctive, and why, despite the harrowing danger that so many Christians are in, we should not consider them to be victims.

We wanted to discover your background and what has led you to where you are today, yet also about the situation faced by the Coptic Orthodox Church, both here in Europe, but also in Egypt as well.

But I'm just going to start off the conversation by asking you about your own story. You were born in Cairo, in Egypt - did you also grow up there? And how did you become an Archbishop in the Coptic Orthodox Church?

By complete surprise to me.

I was born in Egypt and we migrated as a family to Australia when I was five. I finished my education there, completed my qualifications, worked. And then I decided to go back to Egypt to join the monastery, expecting that I would live the rest of my life in, quite literally, the desert.

How old were you when you decided that?

I was the ripe old age of twenty-two.

And what prompted it? That’s quite an unusual decision.

It is, I think, like any sort of ministry, a calling.

And no, there were no bright lights or big voices. But I do remember the exact moment in my room, I was doing some postgraduate studies, so I had my books surrounding me, and all of a sudden I felt this incredible calling, this feeling. I remember I closed my book, put it on the side, and never looked back.

And that was it – I was going to the life of the monastery. But then in retrospect, you realise that the calling has been happening over a long period. That's the wonderful benefit of the hindsight. So many things had been preparing me for that moment, but that's the moment when it became real.

And so, you moved back to Egypt, and you joined one of the monasteries, which of course goes back to the days of Antony, back in the second century, and that long tradition of Egyptian desert monasticism?

I did.

The monastery is halfway between Cairo and Alexandria. And it's said that that part of wilderness was a monastic area where there were, at one stage, 10,000 monks and nuns. There were 50 major monasteries and 500 settlements. It has been there for 1,500 years, which is quite the history.

I remember one particular instance when I was there, towards the end of my time (I was there for six years before I was sent to the UK to serve), I was walking down a tunnel, a tunnel that links the back of the church with the refectory. Because, of course, monks would come from the desert, gather for Liturgy in the church, and then after they finished, would move into the refectory to break the fast. And I just had shivers down my spine. I don't know why, but for the first time, it struck me that monks had been walking up and down this tunnel for 1,500 years, and I was the latest generation of monks to do that very thing. It was just such a beautiful feeling.

There's been quite a revival of Coptic monasticism in Egypt in recent decades.

What has stimulated that revival?

It was stimulated by the late Pope Shenouda III, who was our Pope before the current Pope Tawadros II. He was a monk from the same region, the same area. He had a great love of monasticism, and really did reinvigorate monastic life through small things, such as that he ensured that his residence was in the monastery.

He wanted the monasteries to have more of a presence in people's lives. Because, if you imagine a community that is living under persecution, they need their monasteries as a haven. I remember one particular day, it was 6th October, which is the Egyptian Day of Independence, and a public holiday. I went to the main monastery and spoke to one of the monks who looked after the guests, and he had said that on that day, 10,000 pilgrims had come through the monastery. They come in busloads from all over the country. It becomes their haven, their escape.

Monasticism is one of the three major pillars of the Coptic Orthodox Church, along with theological teaching, and martyrology. So there is still a great space for monasticism, and we have a very specific experience of it, because we have an oversubscription of people wanting to be monks and nuns. For that reason we're constantly building monastic cells in our monasteries and our convents, to keep up with the demand.

It's quite a rigorous life. We wake up at 4am for what we call midnight praises, which are preceded by the Midnight Prayers, one of the seven offices that are prayed throughout the day: a series of psalms, Scripture readings and litanies. That will go through to about 6am, at which point there will be a Eucharistic service, and then monks go back to their cells. Those who don't have to work very early will get a little bit of sleep, others will go straight into their work. All of the monks work.

They do everything from overseeing agricultural work, to construction and maintenance. There is a workforce of about, let's say, two to three hundred, just to oversee these incredible acres of agricultural farmland. We also have livestock.

There are monks who will be responsible for guests, engineering, and so on. So, everyone has a job. It's like a city. It's a complete community.

In the evening, at sunset, we meet in church again for the evening prayers, where again, we chant the Psalms, read Scripture, and then we literally go out and walk in the desert, and just greet sunset in the desert, then come back and then do our own studies.

Do you miss being there?

Well, I still have my cell there, because monks die to the world. You see, there are two parts of a monastic consecration service. The first half is a full funeral service, where you lie on the ground, are covered with an altar curtain, and there’s a full funeral service for you. Your old life has concluded. The second part is a joyous service where you get up, are given a new name, and are welcomed into monastic life. The monastery becomes your family. So, my cell will remain mine in my monastery until I die, because I have nowhere else to go to. It’s home.

Tell us a little bit about the Coptic Orthodox Church, what makes it distinct?

Well, Coptic simply means Egyptian.

Christianity has been in Egypt since the first century. In 55 AD, St Mark the Evangelist, the writer of the Gospel, went to Egypt and started preaching Christianity there.

It spread quite quickly because of the foundation of ancient Egyptian theology and mythology. In the Egyptian spirituality, you already have concepts of deities, an afterlife and of judgment. It was easy for Egyptians to absorb and accept the idea of Christ and Christianity.

Within a few centuries, Egypt became 85 per cent Christian. The church has remained there. St Mark is considered our first Pope, and we’ve had an unbroken succession of priesthood until now; so I can trace my priestly ancestry all the way back to St. Mark, and through him, to Jesus.

We are also a very scriptural church, with the Bible is core to all things. It's also a deeply sacramental church.

While Islam and Arabization in Egypt started in the seventh century in Egypt, Christianity went back to the first century. So, our roots are in ancient Egypt.

I think that's important for us because it shows not only the longevity, but the resilience of the Christians in Egypt, who have been persecuted massively. If it wasn't Rome, it was Byzantium, the Turks, and many others. And yet the church remains strong. It still remains the largest Christian gathering in the Middle East, with about 15 million Christians in the Egypt.

You began talking about the reality of persecution. This always strikes me when I meet Coptic Christians. I have a Coptic friend in Jerusalem who has the cross tattooed on his wrist, as all Coptic Christians do.

Yes. It’s a proclamation of Faith and a daily witness.

And I suppose, most people’s minds go to that horrific event in 2015 when 21 Coptic Christians were lined up on the beach and beheaded by ISIS.

I just want to offer a slight correction, there were 20 Coptic Christians and one of them was a Ghanaian whose name was Matthew.

You must remember that time. Do you remember where you were when you heard that and what your reactions were and what were your feelings around that time?

Absolutely. The Libya martyrs were pivotal in my life.

You were talking about tattooed Coptic crosses, I have one on my right wrist on the inside of the wrist, if you imagine palm facing up.

I didn't have one originally because I grew up in Australia. I had it done in 2015 after the Libya martyrs because I was so moved by their story and I was so moved by their witness. And so this was done in memory of that.

I remember it very well. I was visiting a family and over the course of the day, we were receiving lots of communications backwards and forwards that these men, who had been kidnapped and we didn't know where they were, had died. The Egyptian foreign ministry said they had died. Then they said they hadn't. There was confusion all day.

And then I finally got a call around 8pm from a news organisation to say that there was a video.

I remember jumping in my car and driving. I stopped along the way because I thought people wanted to know. I posted on my Twitter account that it had been confirmed that these men had died, and that we were praying for their families and communities.

I don't know why, but I felt compelled to write ‘father forgive’ at the end of my message. It's just what I felt. I went and did this interview, and the interviewer asked - how can you talk about forgiveness? How does a Coptic bishop, who sees this happen to his spiritual children, talk about forgiveness? Quite simply, that's really what we've been taught by our church: forgiveness, resilience, and reconciliation.

I remember, during the next 24 hours, I must have done something like 36 back-to-back interviews between television, radio and press, and the whole conversation became about forgiveness.

Even right up to today, it's remarkable how much the witness of these men has touched so many lives.

We can spend a lot of our Christian lives only pondering the hypothetical. And yet, some of the real tenets of Christianity are laser sharp for those who face persecution. They're focused and their witness is vibrant. Those of us who don't have pressure put on us for our faith have so much to learn from them about the preciousness and resilience of our faith.

This has been the story of Christianity since the beginning, since our Lord Jesus Christ himself walked on this earth. He was rejected and persecuted. He was captured, tortured, killed, and so that is our story. It's one of carrying that cross, but carrying the cross comes with grace.

One thing concerns me sometimes - when we speak of Christians who are persecuted, we speak of them as victims. The language we use is ‘survivors’, not ‘victims’. Christian communities have survived, and survived incredibly well, with great courage and grace.

Article

Creed

Death & life

Easter

Film & TV

14 April 2025

9 min read

Harry Potter and the mysteries of death

Horcruxes and our digital consciousness

Jonny Torrance

Jonathan is a priest and theologian who researches theology and comedy.

Hermoine rests her head on the shoulder of Harry Potter.

Harry and Hermione at the grave of his parents.

Warner Bros.

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with some friends that has stuck with me. One of them is a palliative care doctor, and we were discussing medical trends which seek the extension of life at all costs. My friends are Jewish, and we as were comparing religious notes, it was unsurprising that they asked me: "well what do Christians think about death?"

I replied, without really thinking: "Well, death is the enemy that is defeated." Somewhat to my surprise, their response was quite negative. "Oh, I don't like that idea. That pushes us towards denying our mortality, and trans-humanism, and the inability to let aged relatives go. We need to become better at welcoming death, at recognising it as part of our humanity."

And as I groped to try and explain why that wasn't quite what I meant, the best analogy I could find for articulating what Christians think about death came from Harry Potter. And in the years since that conversation, it is still the best analogy that I can find to talk about mortality.

So, here is the version of what I wish I had said.

The Harry Potter books have many themes, but above all they are about death. That may sound unlikely for a series of books apparently aimed at children, but the evidence stacks up...

The main character is an orphan, and the majority of people he comes close to will die across the seven books. (Now seems as good a time as any to mention that the rest of this article will basically all be spoilers, so maybe stop now if you've been putting off reading the books for the last 20 years. I'm also going to assume you are at least reasonably familiar with the plot).

Harry's life is defined by the death of his parents and his own close shave with mortality as a baby, and as the books continue the body count gets almost ludicrously high.

Indeed, the author J.K. Rowling has said that Harry is "the prism through which I view death in its many forms."

Unsurprisingly, given how central the theme is, there is a certain amount of explicit reflection on death, even if it is somewhat vague. Thus, we find that: "to the well organised mind, death is but the next great adventure." Dying hurts not at all, but is "quicker and easier than falling asleep." Those who die can "go on," perhaps by "boarding a train."

If all of this sounds a touch sentimental and the sort of thing that might appear in bad funeral sermons, it is paired with descriptions of grief that are visceral and deeply moving. (I may have cried more than once whilst doing the "research" for this article).

But where the discussion of death gets really interesting, at least to me, is in the plot, and the metaphysics that underpins it. By metaphysics I just mean the whole picture of the structure of reality that makes the world of Harry Potter work.

And in this metaphysics we find that death is indeed an enemy. This becomes clear partly through the sheer excruciating depiction of loss that runs through the books - how could something that causes this much pain be anything but an enemy? - but in book seven it is also made explicit.

In one of my favourite moments of the whole series, Harry stands before his parents' gravestone, and reads the epitaph:

'"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death"... A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a death Eater idea? Why is that there?"

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means... you know... living beyond death. Living after death."'

In Harry and Hermione's reaction to the quote on his parent's tombstone we find that there are multiple ways for death to be an enemy.

The Deathly Hallows sounds eerily like a current technological advancement: the rising trend of griefbots.

Book seven, in fact, presents three ways to defeat death, and they are highly illuminating.

Firstly, there are Horcruxes. This is Voldemort's project for immortality: the division of his soul via murder and the darkest magic, and the implantation of those parts of the soul into objects which guarantee that, even should he die, he will live on.

This is, I think it's fair to say, not a vision of the death's vanquishing which the books present as appealing - Voldemort is the darkest wizard of living memory, and the creation of his Horcruxes takes him deeper into evil than anyone has ever gone. Yet it has strange parallels to various current attempts at death defiance. Dividing your soul up and placing it in objects sounds pretty similar to me to uploading your consciousness into a computer.

Now I'm not saying that all transhumanists are evil wizards whose projects rely on murder, but I do wonder if the same impulse lies behind Horcruxes and downloaded consciousness.

There is, in both, the same fear of death, the same refusal to accept that my life might end. And there is the same default assumption that the body doesn't really matter - that the centre of my being is somewhere else, and that I can separate it from this inconvenient vessel which is so subject to injury and decay. The inevitability of bodily death is acknowledged, but life can go on even if my body fails, because I can place myself into objects. What matters is my consciousness, and that can be made eternal.

The second option is a little more complex: the Deathly Hallows. These are three strange, mysterious objects, possession of which promises to make the bearer "master of death." The wand that gives murderous power. The stone that brings back the dead. The cloak that conceals.

The Hallows dress up their promise in esoteric garb - they offer a quest for the initiated that requires a certain embrace of mystery, and they certainly seem friendlier than Horcruxes, since no one has to die to make them.

But in the end, as Dumbledore admits, they are not really that different from the Horcruxes, for those who seek them also respond to the temptation to defy death, just like Voldemort. And if Horcruxes are about preserving the soul in the face of the inevitability of bodily death, the Hallows tease the possibility of avoiding death altogether, through the exercise of power.

The wand gives the power of invincibility and conquest: the avoidance of death through the murder of all who might threaten to kill.

The cloak gives the power to hide, to keep out of trouble, to evade death by escape.

And the stone? The stone overcomes the loss of death by bringing its victims back, by refusing to accept that those we love might leave us.

Again, the Deathly Hallows sounds eerily like a current technological advancement: the rising trend of griefbots. There is the same attempt to respond to grief by clinging to simulations of those whom we mourn, and the same despair at the end of the line. For the dead do not belong with the living, we are told, and legend has it the first owner of the stone was driven to suicide.

The Hallows attempt to deny death through power, and this is why Dumbledore found them so alluring, and so destructive: they promised to wind back his own loss while giving him the victory he thought would give his life meaning.

And yet, in reality, even when Harry unites them all, they don't give what they promise. Indeed, they only work to their full power when they are used for humbler ambitions: to hide friends from danger, to perform wondrous magic without boasting in the glory of the wand, or to face death with the comforting presence of those who have gone before.

For the stone only becomes available to Harry when he finally embraces the third way to defeat the death. The way his parents believed in.

Death, in the Potter books, is defeated by dying. Or perhaps more specifically, by dying for love - love of children, love of friends, love of a world gone tragically wrong.

Harry's mother protected her son from dying multiple times, through the power of her sacrificially loving surrender. Dumbledore, in a complex way, protects Malfoy and saves the Elder Wand from Voldemort, thereby protecting the whole wizarding world, through his voluntary death. Even Snape, in the bitterest and most twisted story of them all, ends up giving Harry what he needs to win and finding a measure of redemption, in and through his own murder.

And, in the climax of this long, convoluted story, Harry avoids death by going willingly to die. Because he loves his friends. Because he hates others dying for him. Because he recognises the terrible duty he faces, the terrible path Dumbledore has laid out for him, and he loves too much to run.

Voldemort is wrong. Love does conquer death.

The parallels to the Christian vision of death are stark. The quote on the tombstone which sparks these reflections for Harry (and for me) is in fact from the Bible. "The last enemy that shall be defeated is death" is a profoundly Christian idea.

Yet my friends were right to react negatively to what they thought I meant by death being an enemy.

For, just like the good guys in Harry Potter, Christians have traditionally been suspicious of attempts at immortality on our own terms. The Bible, I would suggest, knows nothing of a technological defeat of death, whether through downloading our consciences, or radical life extension, or technologies of power. Death cannot be staved off by any of our own work.

But this does not mean that death is a good thing, simply a part of human existence which we would do well to welcome and learn to get along with (though I do think we would do better to think about death more, and be more honest about its existence).

Death is an enemy. It is the final enemy. We are right to rage against it. To grieve those whom we lose. To feel its existential weight.

Yet, perhaps paradoxically, we should not fear it. For death is an enemy that has been vanquished, but vanquished through Jesus' death.

Immortality is not, for Christians, something we achieve, but something that is given to us. We believe in the Saviour who dies, and who rises again, and in whose resurrection, as strange as it may sound, we also will be raised. Death is defeated by love, but it is not our love, it is God's love for us.

This gift, according to the early Christian writers, can only be received by going through death, not by avoiding death. Indeed, Paul's letters, which make up most of the New Testament, are full of the insistence that the pattern of Christian life is always death first, then life. Death in baptism, to new life in Christ. Death to sin, to life in freedom. Bodily death, to bodily resurrection.

And so, what I should have said to my friend, is that Hermione is right. Death is the final enemy to be defeated, but this does not mean the ways of the Death Eaters. It does not mean projects of immortality, whether rooted in science, or a mystery cult, or power over others.

Rather it means it life after death - a life that is given to us, by our saviour who has been through death and defeated it.

Death is the enemy but it is not our enemy to defeat. That victory was won for us, on Easter Sunday 2000 years ago, in a cemetery near Jerusalem, when Jesus rose again.

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