Egypt's Coptic Pope Tawadros II is scheduled to arrive in Jerusalem next Thursday for the first visit of its kind in decades, Cairo's MENA news agency said Thursday. Tawadros, who will be visiting Israel with a small delegation of senior bishops, will attend the funeral of Archbishop Anba Abraham, head of the Coptic Church in the Holy Land, who died on Wednesday at the age of 72, the report said. The visit effectively defies a ban on pilgrimages to Israel, issued by Tawadros' predecessor, Pope Shenouda III, in 1980 over his objection to the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. While Coptic Church officials said the visit was a private one and as such had no bearing on the travel ban, Agence France-Presse reported that Tawadros' decision to visit Israel has sparked controversy among church followers, saying social media sites are rife with posts by Egyptian Copts accusing the cleric of "betrayal." "I don't consider this to be a visit, because the word 'visit' means that one prepares it in advance with a schedule and appointments. I consider this to be a human duty, a condolence duty," AFP quoted Tawadros as saying. "The position of the church remains unchanged," a Coptic Church spokesman stressed Thursday. Copts are a recognized Christian minority in Israel, with a small community numbering only a few hundred families.
