By Manos Chatzigiannis – BombNews-
Newsbomb obtained the letter of the Holy Community — Serious objections to the scenarios being circulated concerning “dual ownership” of the historic Monastery’s property
Snapshot
- The Holy Community of Mount Athos expresses strong objections to scenarios concerning dual ownership of the property of St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.
- The conversion of ownership into a right of use is regarded as a change to the existing status rather than its preservation.
- The Holy Community calls on the Egyptian government to respect the Monastery’s historical and legal continuity and safeguard its status.
- The status of the Sinai Monastery has remained unchanged for centuries and constitutes an important part of the Orthodox monastic tradition and the history of the East.
- The Holy Community of Mount Athos expresses its solidarity with the Sinaitic Brotherhood and stresses the need to safeguard the Monastery’s monastic autonomy and property rights.
The Athonite community has intervened regarding the much-discussed case of St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.
In a letter, the Holy Community of Mount Athos (2O monasteries) puts on the table the burning issues concerning the Monastery’s property status and, in particular, comments on information recently leaked by certain circles concerning dual ownership. The Athonites oppose these scenarios, express their concern, and emphasize:
“The conversion of a historic right of ownership into a granted right of use constitutes a change in the status quo, not its preservation.”
At the same time, it also confronts the Egyptian government with its responsibilities.
The letter obtained by Newsbomb reads in full:
*****
HOLY COMMUNITY OF MOUNT ATHOS
PROTOCOL NO. F.2/5b/2481
Karyes, September 10, 2026 (August 28, Julian)
To: His Eminence the Archbishop of Sinai, Pharan and Raitho and Abbot of the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine,
Symeon
Egypt
Your Eminence, Father and Master,
The Holy Community of Mount Athos, representing the twenty Holy and Royal Monasteries of our Athonite polity, expresses to Your Eminence its heartfelt and fraternal congratulations upon your election to the renowned throne of the Holy Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai.
We wholeheartedly pray that St. Catherine the Great Martyr, the protector and guardian of your ancient Monastery, may protect and strengthen you in the high ministry that you have undertaken at a particularly critical turning point in its centuries-old history. Our joy at your election is accompanied, however, by deep concern over developments concerning the historical, legal and property status of the Holy Monastery.
Sinai and Athos are linked by bonds far deeper than their common monastic tradition. They constitute two of the very few surviving living monastic institutions in the modern world which, under the protection of the Most Holy Theotokos, have preserved through the centuries a distinctive status of self-government, institutional autonomy, property rights and public law, under successive political and legal orders.
It is no coincidence that Sinai has been described as “the Mount Athos of the first millennium.” Just as Athos became, during the second millennium, the preeminent repository of Orthodox cenobitic and hesychastic monasticism, so the God-Trodden Mount Sinai has constituted, since the first Christian centuries, a living testimony to the monastic tradition of the East.
But what is remarkable in the case of Sinai is something more: the status of this sacred institution has been respected through the centuries.
Successive sovereign powers, belonging to different religious and political traditions, recognized and safeguarded the Sinaitic Brotherhood, its autonomy, its possessions, dependencies, waqfs and privileges. In particular, the Islamic and Ottoman legal order, through imperial decrees, judicial acts and waqf institutions, repeatedly recognized and protected the rights of the Monastery and the Brotherhood.
This uninterrupted historical continuity is Sinai’s great legacy.
And modern Egypt has the exceptional privilege, but at the same time the great historical responsibility, to hand down this unique status unchanged to future generations, just as it inherited it from centuries of history.
For this reason, we were profoundly concerned by recent reports according to which a new and unprecedented system of so-called “dual ownership” is allegedly under discussion, under which ownership of the Monastery and its historic property would pass to the Egyptian State, while the Sinaitic Brotherhood would be left with the right of use.
If this information is true, this would constitute a change that cannot simply be regarded as a new means of safeguarding the existing status.
Ownership and use are not identical rights. And the conversion of a historic right of ownership into a granted right of use constitutes a change in the status quo, not its preservation.
We Athonites know from our own centuries-old history that ancient monastic regimes are not preserved through temporary concessions, nor through guarantees dependent upon changing circumstances. They are preserved when the State recognizes and respects the institutional continuity, self-government and historic rights that it has inherited from History.
Therefore, Your Eminence of Sinai, we wish you to know that the Holy Community and the entire Athonite Brotherhood stand fraternally and wholeheartedly beside you and beside the Sinaitic Brotherhood.
Our position is simple and clear:
The historical, monastic, institutional, legal and property status of the Holy Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai must remain unchanged as it is, without any alteration whatsoever.
What sixteen centuries of History have respected must remain respected today.
And safeguarding Sinai does not concern only the Sinaitic Fathers. It concerns the whole of Orthodoxy, because the overturning of an ancient monastic status of such historical duration would constitute a dangerous precedent for the ancient Patriarchates, historic monastic institutions and the sacred sites of the East.
In our Athonite consciousness, Athos cannot regard Sinai as someone else’s concern. The ordeal of the Sinaitic Brotherhood is also our ordeal.
We believe that Egypt, a country of great history and civilization, will understand the magnitude of its responsibility and will choose to become, in the twenty-first century as well, a guarantor of Sinai’s historical continuity, just as so many sovereign powers and rulers before it have been.
And above human plans and concerns, we retain our unwavering conviction that St. Catherine the Great Martyr will not abandon her Monastery and the Brotherhood which for so many centuries has served her sacred shrine.
Invoking her intercessions and praying that the Lord may strengthen you in the weighty and historic responsibility that you have undertaken, we remain with the deepest respect and fraternal love in Christ.
Signed by
All the Representatives and Superiors assembled in the Common Synaxis of the twenty Holy Monasteries of Mount Athos.
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