By Nada Arafat – Mada Masr
On the evening of August 26, at the foot of Jabal Moussa in the heart of South Sinai, St. Catherine’s Monastery descended into turmoil. From inside its walls, Archbishop Damianos, head of the monastery and Archbishop of Sinai, watched from a distance as hired guards stormed the monks’ cells, smashing doors and windows. “Come on, drag him out! Get out!” A monk’s voice could be heard yelling: “What? What’s going on?” Moments later, 11 barefoot monks in their nightclothes were dragged and thrown outside the gates of the monastery they had served for decades.
Caught between the archbishop’s account of “dissidents” who had attacked and illegally deposed him and the counter-narrative of monks rebelling against Damianos over his leadership and resisting his bid to draw the monastery closer to Greece, the crisis has crystallized into an unprecedented chapter in the history of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited monastery, long a symbol of seclusion and autonomy. After surviving centuries of wars and occupations, St. Catherine’s Monastery now faces one of its most complex crises: an internal struggle over monastic authority entangled with external contest as Athens and Cairo vie for control over a site that for centuries embodied spiritual freedom — now at risk of becoming either a political bargaining chip or a lifeless heritage attraction folded into a wider development plan for the region.
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The roots of the crisis can be traced back to May, when an appeals court in Ismailia issued a final ruling stripping Damianos, in his capacity as monastery head, of ownership over 14 of 71 land plots inside and outside the monastery. The court left the monastery with usufruct rights — not ownership — over 57 plots, including the monastery grounds, after nearly a decade of legal battles. The seized lands included olive groves, historic gardens, chapels and water sources. While the monks warned the ruling would undermine the monastery’s income and way of life, the Egyptian government framed it as “regularizing the monastery’s status.”
Weeks after the ruling, Damianos traveled to Greece to discuss a draft law introduced in the Hellenic Parliament. Passed at the end of July, the law created a public authority based in Athens with sweeping powers to manage the monastery’s assets — both movable, such as funds, manuscripts and artifacts, and immovable, like lands, gardens and buildings. Its board comprises the archbishop, the monastery’s administrative agent and their representative in Greece, as well as two public figures appointed by Greece’s minister of education, religious affairs and sports, who put the legislation forward.
A copy of the law reviewed by Mada Masr shows it allows the transfer of ownership or usufruct rights of monastery property — inside or outside Sinai, movable or immovable — to the new Athens authority. It also dissolves two charitable foundations linked to the monastery — Mount Sinai Foundation and the European Mount Sinai Cultural Center — automatically transferring all their assets to the new body.
Supporters of Damianos present the law as a “safeguard,” arguing that Athens guarantees the monastery’s stability. But although the law’s text requires the authority to consult the monastery before any decision and nullifies decisions not ratified by the monastery within six months, it does not define what “the monastery” precisely means.
This omission is crucial, because under centuries-old tradition, the Brotherhood of St. Catherine, comprising all the monks, is the monastery’s highest authority, with the Council of Monks — the brotherhood’s administrative body — holding the final say in governance. By leaving “the monastery” undefined, the law could sidestep this council, instead leaning on the authority’s board members, who are drawn from the brotherhood, as representatives of the brotherhood’s will.
For more than four centuries, St. Catherine’s Monastery has enjoyed spiritual and administrative autonomy. In 1575, the Greek Orthodox Autonomous Archdiocese of Sinai — under which the monastery falls — secured its independence from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Despite its long-standing ties with Constantinople and spiritual links to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, St. Catherine’s has retained full self-rule to this day.
Within this framework, authority at the monastery has always rested with the community as a whole. The Brotherhood of St. Catherine ensures that no single figure monopolizes authority.
Archbishop Damianos’s handling of the Greek law, however, broke with this deeply rooted tradition. Instead of securing the required two-thirds approval of the council, as mandated by the monastery’s statutes, he bypassed consultation altogether and pressed ahead. The monks denounced this as “the ultimate betrayal of the monastery” in a 22-page document sent to and reviewed by Mada Masr, detailing developments and compiling their files on the matter.
For the monks, the law amounts to nothing less than “erasing the monastery’s independence” and “dismantling the collective authority of the Council of the Monks,” placing the community under outside control and turning it into a bargaining chip in Cairo-Athens relations, according to a source close to the monks. This fueled revolt against Damianos — who has led the monastery for more than half a century — amid allegations of financial misconduct, unilateral decision-making and a decline in his spiritual leadership, the source told Mada Masr.
In defense of their collective authority, the brotherhood sent a legal memorandum to Greek authorities on July 22, as the public debate on the bill closed, asserting that “any signature in the monastery’s name is invalid in the absence of authorization.” They also filed an internal protest calling for reform. The archbishop’s response was to order them to “stop using the monastery’s secretariat email.” Both files are included in the document reviewed by Mada Masr.
According to the document, the monks tried repeatedly between July 22 and 30 to meet with Damianos and discuss their demands. After being turned down, they convened a formal meeting on July 30 under the authority of their 1971 statutes, which affirm that “the brotherhood is independent, free and sovereign in administrative and financial affairs,” with sole rights over the monastery’s assets “inside or outside Sinai.” The statutes also grant the Council of Monks the power to elect the archbishop and his three-member advisory council, and to “compel the archbishop to resign or depose him” in cases of mismanagement, financial misconduct or doctrinal deviation.
The July 30 meeting ended with a vote to depose Damianos: 16 out of 23 monks — two-thirds of the council, in line with the monastery’s rules — voted to remove him. The brotherhood also moved to elect a new advisory council, made up of the monastery’s deputy, its financial director and its treasurer.
The decision to depose Damianos was not merely a reaction to his signing of the Greek law. It was the culmination of years of mounting tensions and grievances, as many monks came to feel his leadership no longer safeguarded the monastery’s independence.
The brotherhood’s document, corroborated by sources close to the monks, details a series of allegations. Chief among them: in 2024, only 60,000 euros was allocated to the monastery’s operations out of revenues exceeding 500,000 euros, while Damianos’s personal expenses surpassed 63,000 euros. The archbishop also allegedly sold monastery properties — an establishment and a warehouse in Greece — without brotherhood approval, in direct violation of the statutes, according to the document.
The conflict extends beyond finances. The monks accuse Damianos of years of absence from major religious celebrations such as Easter and Christmas, as well as ethical breaches that they consider a “red line” under the laws of the Ecumenical Council — the Orthodox Church’s highest legislative authority since the early centuries of Christianity, which sets binding standards of doctrine and governance across the Orthodox world.
With Damianos now 91 and in failing health, the monks say he has lost the ability to carry out his basic duties — from drafting official documents and reading liturgical texts to overseeing the monastery’s daily affairs. The brotherhood’s document describes him as “no longer aware of what is happening inside the monastery, deprived of sound judgment and vulnerable to external influence and control by different parties” — a state they believe has been reflected in his recent decisions.
The same document, along with the source close to the monastery, also details repeated attempts by Damianos to expel and replace veteran monks. The brotherhood condemned these moves as “personal ambitions to seize control of the monastery,” citing instances in which the archbishop directly petitioned Egyptian authorities to cancel the visa of one of the monastery’s oldest monks. With the exception of Damianos, none of the monks hold Egyptian citizenship. The brotherhood called the move “an abuse of power” and an attempt to expose the monastery to outside interference, part of a broader effort to “empty it of its historic figures.”
These accumulated grievances, coupled with what they see as the absence of spiritual leadership, led the monks to frame Damianos’s removal not as rebellion but as “a rescue move” — an effort to protect the monastery from what they describe as a path that threatens its identity and historic independence.
Damianos, however, struck back. In response to the Council of Monks vote, he dismissed members of the newly elected advisory council, including the monk appointed to oversee finances, before seizing control of the monastery’s bank accounts and transferring funds into accounts in his own name. “He’s the only one with Egyptian citizenship, which means the monastery’s accounts are under his management, and he can control them with the advisory council handling oversight,” one monk who has contact with the monastery explained. Egyptian authorities typically grant the monastery’s leader citizenship for administrative reasons — something that now gives Damianos a powerful legal lever.
Seeking to solidify their own legitimacy, the brotherhood turned to other authorities, including the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. On Sunday, the patriarchate issued a statement siding with the monks, affirming what it called “the rights of the Fathers of the Holy Monastery, as these have been enshrined in its fundamental regulations and safeguarded throughout its centuries-old monastic tradition.” The statement also urged the Hellenic state and all relevant parties “to cooperate in order to safeguard the canonical order.” For St. Catherine’s monks, according to the source close to them, the patriarchate’s support is proof of both their brotherhood’s legitimacy and the legality of their actions.
A month after being deposed following his endorsement of the new Greek law, Damianos returned to St. Catherine’s with around ten hired private security guards in what monks described as an unprecedented raid — an incident captured in video footage obtained by Mada Masr. After monks were forced out, an Egyptian security unit attempted to intervene and open the main gate to let the monks back in, but quickly withdrew after receiving orders not to interfere, according to accounts from inside the monastery. The expelled monks sought refuge in the monastery’s guesthouse outside the walls, while Damianos declared the monastery closed for four days, leaving only about five monks inside. A source from the Tourism Chamber confirmed to Mada Masr that the site remains closed to this day.
The following day, Damianos issued a statement describing the expelled monks as “conspirators in a coup,” claiming they had “attacked and injured him, as they had during his previous visit,” and asserting that “the monks who did not take part in the coup have restored the monastery’s legitimacy.”
Meanwhile, the monastery’s deputy, accompanied by four of the expelled monks as witnesses, went to the St. Catherine police station and later to the Dahab station in South Sinai to file a complaint. The filing accused the archbishop of expelling them with the help of “thugs,” causing serious injuries, and stealing the phones and money of some, according to the police report, a copy of which Mada Masr reviewed.
With Damianos still in control of the monastery’s gates and finances, the monks find themselves trapped in a legal limbo, unable to pursue their ongoing case against the Egyptian government over land. “Right now, no legal action against the Egyptian government can move forward because a new archbishop hasn’t been elected,” the source close to the monks said. Elections for new leadership had been planned for September, but the upheaval has paralyzed preparations, leaving the monastery’s future suspended in uncertainty.
Officially, Cairo has remained silent, though hints of diplomatic moves have emerged. A source at Cairo International Airport told Mada Masr that Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Atty had just returned from an unannounced visit to Athens. In contrast, Greece’s Education and Religious Affairs Minister Sofia Zacharaki, who had introduced the legislation, voiced her support for Damianos in early August, telling parliament: “[Damianos] is the lawful and canonical archbishop of Sinai […] From that point on, each of us must weigh our responsibilities before the 15 centuries of history this sacred institution represents.” Greek opposition lawmakers, however, criticized their government’s inaction, warning that the situation “undermines the legacy of the world’s oldest living Christian monastery” and comes within broader diplomatic failures that put Greece’s interests at risk.
According to a researcher informed about the crisis who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, the turmoil at St. Catherine’s has already spilled beyond monastery walls and become a pawn in the larger balance of power between Cairo and Athens. While the two countries deepen strategic partnerships, particularly joint energy projects in the eastern Mediterranean, Greece is seeking to tighten its influence by legally and institutionally binding the monastery to its official structures, the researcher said, giving Athens an additional lever in its dealings with Cairo. Egypt, for its part, is keeping its grip on the ground — whether through the May court ruling that downgraded the monastery’s land rights to usufruct, or through the Great Transfiguration development project launched four years ago, which is reshaping St. Catherine and its surroundings entirely.
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Photo Credit: St. Catherine’s Monastery. Source: Esben Stenfeldt, 2011.
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