Egypt’s desecration of Sinai’s Christian Sacred Heart

In the Sinai’s austere embrace, Saint Catherine’s Monastery, the world’s oldest monastic community, burns with 1.500 years of Christian faith and Hellenic heritage. Egypt’s courts have decided to extinguish this holy flame, seizing its lands. This is no legal matter. It is an assault on Europe’s soul. And so far, it is also an Athens and EU betrayal.

The Greek Orthodox Saint Catherine’s is no relic. Founded by Emperor Justinian I, it was built between 548 and 565 AD on the site where Moses beheld the Burning Bush.  The monastery holds manuscripts -Greek, Syriac, Arabic- comprising a library second only to the Vatican. Its ancient icons radiate divinity. Protected by Muhammad’s Ashtiname, a writ granting protection and signed with Mohammad’s palm print in 623 AD, it stands as a sacred trust, hallowed on the site where Moses met God.

Egypt’s museum plan kills this legacy, reducing a living treasure to a tourist trap. On May 28, 2025, an Ismailia court ruled the monastery’s lands are state property, deeming its monks squatters despite Ottoman-era records. This echoes the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda, persisting under Egyptian President el-Sisi’s secularist façade. Egypt’s “world heritage” claim shows theft as tourism.

Any Greek leader should be roaring. Saint Catherine’s ties Greece to Byzantium, from Constantinople to Alexandria, in lands where it was first brought by Alexander the Great -exactly where Christianity first took root. Mitsotakis is failing to defending this legacy. His assurances from el-Sisi’s May 7 Athens visit are dust. His envoys to Cairo are too little too late.

Whispers of betrayal grow louder. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reports claim that Mitsotakis traded silence on Saint Catherine’s for a €5 billion energy deal with Egypt. If true, this barter of heritage for profit is a new low, turning duty into a chip.

Greece’s failure is consistent. The Turkish reconversion of the ancient Christian churches Hagia Sophia and Chora Church from museums back into mosques, alongside Middle Eastern Christian genocides, went unanswered. The EU’s silence is damning too. Brussels, loud on human rights, mumbles about “monitoring.” Having ignored Christian slaughter in Syria and Iraq, Europe risks cultural erasure. This assaults the West’s roots.

The Orthodox Church resists. Archbishop Ieronymos II calls the ruling a “violent infringement,” evoking Constantinople’s 1453 fall. “I refuse to accept another Fall,” he declared. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I pleads for Egypt’s honour. The monks, closing their gates, pray amidst icons, channelling Orthodoxy’s mystic core: God in a lamp’s flicker.

Orthodoxy sees the divine where Moses received the Law. Saint Catherine’s is irreplaceable. Greece must demand Egypt’s reversal, using EU leverage and Cairo ties. Mitsotakis must act with a nation’s ferocity, not platitudes. Brussels must enforce UNESCO’s mandate, which protects the site as a religious institution.

Egypt claims the ruling “consolidates” the monastery’s status, denying confiscation. Yet the court’s decision -declaring state ownership- contradicts this. The monks’ right to “use” is hollow when their 15-century tenure is questioned. This legal deception, tied to tourism megaprojects, threatens to evict the monastic community.

The monks appeal to Christian Churches and monotheistic faiths globally, from Rome to Jerusalem. Their fight is ours. Saint Catherine’s is humanity’s, its library holding unique wisdom, including the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest bible in the world. Its interfaith legacy is a beacon. To let it fall is to let fanaticism win.

This is a reckoning. Will faith and identity cower before Islamist aggressiveness and economic lures? The EU must act, not hide behind bureaucratic murmurs. As monks pray within ancient walls, Byzantine ghosts watch. Will Greece reclaim its duty? Will Europe defend its heritage? The seizure of Saint Catherine’s tests the West’s soul.