By Dionysios Skliris – To-Vima.gr –
Following MEP Nikolas Farantouris’s visit to Sinai and the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, intense activity and maneuvering are taking place around the status of the Sinai Monastery, as a diplomatic effort is underway to reach an agreement between the Monastery and the Egyptian state before an October 24 deadline, when the decision of Egypt’s Supreme Court of Cassation is supposedly due to be published.
(Editor’s note: October 24 should not be treated as an independently verified judicial deadline. The date appears in Greek reporting based on unnamed Egyptian and diplomatic sources, and no official Court of Cassation announcement confirming it has so far been identified. It has nevertheless progressively been presented by Greek officials and media as an established deadline, creating a powerful sense of urgency around the negotiations. Knowledgeable sources believe that this purported deadline originated as a negotiating pressure tactic intended to induce the Brotherhood to sign the proposed agreement. That allegation remains unverified.)
Before the Plenary of the European Parliament
The issue is expected to reach the European Parliament, including the plenary session beginning on Oct. 5 in Strasbourg, following the recent initiatives of MEP Nikolas Farantouris.
The Greek MEP and member of the European Parliament’s Committees on Budgets and Foreign Affairs, Professor Nikolas Farantouris, visited Egypt and the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai from September 24 to 27, at the invitation of the Sinaitic Community and the Egyptian authorities.
The purpose of his visit was to obtain information about the situation that has developed around the Monastery’s ownership status, to support the monastic community, and to explore how the European Parliament could contribute to a fair and sustainable solution.
“The Sinaitic Brotherhood is facing serious uncertainty regarding the ownership status of the Monastery and its assets, following last year’s Egyptian court ruling that called into question the ownership of the Monastery’s properties,” Nikolas Farantouris said from inside the Monastery, stressing that “this is a living monastic community with an uninterrupted presence of 1,600 years and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”
Meeting with Yasmine Moussa at the Foreign Ministry
Upon his return to Cairo on Sunday, September 27, Mr. Farantouris visited the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, following up on the meeting he had held in Brussels with Egypt’s Ambassador to the European Union, Ahmed Abu Zeid. The discussions focused on developments surrounding the Monastery and on possible ways of resolving the outstanding issues, including through the European dimension of the matter.
According to exclusive statements he made to To Vima, the MEP stressed during his contacts that both the European Union and Greece seek a stable and strategic relationship with Egypt, which is a crucial partner in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In his meeting with Yasmine Moussa, senior legal adviser to the Office of the Egyptian Foreign Minister and responsible for the “Sinai file,” the MEP emphasized the European dimension of the issue, insisting on safeguarding religious freedom, the Monastery’s historical and institutional continuity, and the uninterrupted presence of the Sinaitic Community “with the ownership status of the Monastery remaining unchanged.”
According to information obtained, legal adviser Yasmine Moussa advanced as arguments for not granting ownership to the Sinai Monastery Egypt’s purported need to ensure that the Monastery’s treasures could not be exported abroad and that the Monastery’s real estate could not subsequently be resold.
For his part, MEP Farantouris insisted that ownership should remain with the Monastery, with such issues being dealt with through specific clauses as part of a diplomatic solution.
Nikolas Farantouris also drew upon his position as a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets to emphasize the connection between any disbursement of funds to Egypt—such as the €4 billion disbursement made in 2025—and Egypt’s respect for religious freedoms as well as the Monastery’s ownership status.
MEP Nikolas Farantouris explained to To Vima the reasons behind his involvement:
“It is a personal interest, but also an institutional obligation. I go back to my childhood years, to my father’s stories, to the accounts of people close to me. As I grew older, I began to understand how important the presence of these centers of worship is for Hellenism, for our people; and later, as a university professor of international and European law in the Department of International and European Studies, I also began to assess what is called the soft power of our country, of the modern Greek state.
“We are bearers of a centuries-old spiritual, cultural, historical and universal presence throughout the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Balkans, and we have an obligation to continue, ‘still holding a flickering spark in damp palms,’ as the poet Manolis Anagnostakis put it, this unfading light of Hellenism.
(…)
“We are therefore here not only because of a spiritual and liturgical point of reference, but also because of an institutional obligation toward a World Heritage monument of critical geopolitical importance.”
“A Revelatory, Overwhelming Experience of a Lifetime”
We asked MEP Nikolas Farantouris what his contact with the monks was like:
“Discreet, but revelatory; sparing in words, but rich in the Holy Spirit. ‘What is lacking in words is complete in understanding.’
“The monks pursue their ascetic life; historical events are secondary in their minds and in their ascetic practice. We laypeople, however, have an obligation to protect them in that practice and, if we can, discreetly make things easier for them. If not, we should stay away.
“Because many times we outsiders—the institutional figures, the politicians, the ‘power brokers,’ in quotation marks—make their lives and their way of life more difficult. I would not want to be one of those actors whose interventions in recent times have led the Monastery into dead ends.
“The monks carry both the individual and collective experience of centuries. The Monastery’s influence throughout the centuries has been immense upon human consciousness, world civilization, thought and philosophy. These people are the continuators of that tradition, each in his own way, but also all together as a community.
“To spend several days living within this community is the highest honor and, at the same time, a responsibility. But it is also a revelatory, overwhelming experience that will remain with me throughout my life.
“The services, the deeply devotional atmosphere in the church, the simplicity, the hospitality—there was an abundance of smiles and open arms. People who live far from the world, yet love the world. They live with restraint, but also with generosity. I encountered a strong monastic community that asks for its tranquility, asks for peace, and prays for us.”
Letter to UNESCO
It should be recalled that a year ago, on September 2, 2025, Nikolas Farantouris sent a letter to UNESCO’s Executive Board expressing serious concerns regarding the Egyptian authorities’ challenge to the ownership status of the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai.
The letter called upon UNESCO’s Executive Board to examine the issue, stressing that “the leadership of the Organization must remain faithful to its universal mission: the protection of cultural heritage and the promotion of justice.”
“Without secured ownership of its land and buildings, St. Catherine’s risks being transformed from a living monastic community into an empty tourist shell,”
he pointedly warned in the letter.
Today, one year later, the matter remains unresolved.
“I call upon the Greek government, the country’s political forces, my fellow MEPs from the 27 EU member states, and the European institutions to join forces—with respect for the friendship and strategic relationship with Egypt—in defense of religious freedoms and the historical continuity of the Monastery,”
the MEP stated while traveling to Brussels, as the issue is expected to be taken up by the plenary session beginning October 5, in Strasbourg.
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