In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, H.H. Patriarch Mar Ignatius Zakka I, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, H.H. Catholicos Aram I, Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia of the Armenian Orthodox Church and H.H. Abuna Paulos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, give thanks to God for bringing us together here in Cairo, Egypt, on Monday, 14 November 2011, to pray together and to reflect together on matters and concerns pertaining to our Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Family in general. We were accompanied by metropolitans, archbishops and bishops of our Churches.

Before the Pope began his weekly sermon, he gave his condolences to the congregation for the Maspiro Martyrs. “Those that protested peacefully without bearing arms”, he continued referring to those who were killed, “walked from Shubra to Maspiro in the open, without weapons, full of courage.”

The crowd responded loudly with chants saying “Raise your head up, you are Coptic”, a slogan that has become popular during Coptic protests.

He confirmed 24 dead and over 300 injured. “The scale of these casualties has never been seen to this extent before!”, the Pope said. “Autopsy showed two thirds of the martyrs died from bullet wounds and a third died by being run over by army vehicles”, after which many were angered in the crowd.

NEW YORK – At the Fall 2011 meet­ing of the Holy Eparchial Synod of the Greek Ortho­dox Arch­dio­cese of Amer­ica, the Most Rev­erend Mem­bers of the Holy Synod unan­i­mously adopted the fol­low­ing statement:

“On behalf of the faith­ful Clergy and Laity of the Greek Ortho­dox Arch­dio­cese of Amer­ica, we, the Mem­bers of the Holy Eparchial Synod, cog­nizant of our respon­si­bil­ity to speak the truth in love, hereby state and declare our sin­cere sup­port for the pious Cop­tic Chris­t­ian Faith­ful of Egypt, dur­ing this most dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion in the life of the Egypt­ian Nation.

Fur­ther­more, we deplore all acts of reli­gious vio­lence by any com­mu­nity or per­sons, know­ing that, as His All Holi­ness Ecu­meni­cal Patri­arch Bartholomew has stated so elo­quently, “A crime com­mit­ted in the name of reli­gion is a crime against religion.”