H.H. Pope Shenouda III, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt since 1971, is one of the most colorful characters in contemporary Egyptian history. Many scholars, including P.J. Vatikiotis, John Watson, Otto F.A. Meinardus and Fiona McCallum, have written about him but studies have usually concentrated on his role in the tensions between church and state in the 1970s culminating in late president al-Sādāt banning him to the Monastery of Bishūy in 1981 from which he was only released in January 1985. Others, such as Dr. Wolfram Reiss have written about his role in the Sunday School movement, a Coptic Orthodox reform movement. None, however, have systematically analyzed how the Egyptian media have written about Pope Shenouda. Arab-West Report has a complete overview of media reporting about Pope Shenouda in a fixed set of Egyptian Arabic media since March 1, 1998. Arab-West Report asked Efthymia Georgiou to make a full overview of all articles found in Egyptian Arabic media found in Arab-West Report. Efthymia is from Greece, and is studying Communication and Cultural Encounters in Denmark. She received a scholarship from the Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute (DEDI) to work in our office from September 24, 2008, to November 19, 2008.

Efthymia's time in our office was too short to use all of the articles to analyze the way the Egyptian media wrote about Pope Shenouda, his involvement in issues concerning church and state, between the Coptic Orthodox Church and other churches in Egypt and internal church issues whereby Egyptian media tended to highlight tensions, a characteristic for much media reporting. We would like to see another student continue the work Efthymia Georgiou has started and analyze the media texts found in our archive.

See the attached paper

Cairo, November 23, 2008
Cornelis Hulsman,
Editor-in-chief AWR