By Alpheratz – (Rana Mamdouh, Sameh Laboudi, Shihab Tarek) –
Between a judicial ruling that confiscates its historical lands and a Greek law that extends authority over its assets and properties, Saint Catherine’s Monastery has been placed at the center of a feverish struggle, turning it into a prize contested by Cairo and Athens. In recent months and weeks, the monastery’s gates have often been closed to pilgrims and tourists, as conflicts over influence within it intensified. The monastery has been turned into a bargaining chip in economic negotiations between Cairo and Athens, and into a point of dispute over sovereignty—threatening to erode the spiritual value it has preserved for fifteen centuries.
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A Monastery at the Crossroads of History
On the slopes of Mount Sinai, where God spoke to the Prophet Moses at the Burning Bush, lies Saint Catherine’s Monastery—known in antiquity as the “Monastery of Mount Sinai”—one of the oldest and most renowned monasteries in the world. In the 4th century AD, Empress Helena, mother of Constantine—the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity—built a small church beside the bush. In the 6th century, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I ordered the construction of the monastery at its current location, to encompass the bush that monks still preserve inside the “Chapel of the Holy Bush.” The monastery bears the name of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who was killed in Alexandria in 307 by order of Emperor Maximinus for her steadfast Christianity and rejection of paganism. The monks believe that five centuries after her death, angels carried her relics to the summit of Mount Sinai. Today, only her skull and a hand bone remain, preserved in a reliquary inside the church’s sanctuary.
The monastery is visited by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Despite countless invasions and campaigns through the centuries—from the Crusades and the Mongols to the French and British occupations of Egypt and the Israeli occupation of Sinai—religious worship at the monastery has never ceased.
The historian Naoum Shuqair described the monastery in his 1916 book History of Sinai and the Arabs as “the most famous building in the peninsula.” He attributed its endurance in the desert, where its monks differ from the local people in religion, race, and customs, to several reasons: the security of its location; the shared reverence for it among the three Abrahamic faiths; and the “Prophet’s Covenant,” a charter of protection for Christians and their churches attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Shuqair noted that Sultan Selim I of the Ottomans took the original covenant to Istanbul when he entered Egypt in 1517, leaving the monks an Ottoman Turkish translation that is still preserved at the monastery.
Coexistence did not stop at that document. During the Fatimid era in the 12th century, the monks built a mosque within the monastery walls, where Bedouins and Muslim visitors still pray to this day. The monastery also maintained reciprocal relations with the local population—helping the poor, providing work in its farms, and benefitting from the presence of pilgrims and tourists.
Over the centuries, monks of various backgrounds resided there: Syrians, Armenians, Ethiopians, Latins, and Egyptians. Armenians predominated in the 8th and 9th centuries, followed by Latins, before the Greeks once again took the lead. According to Shuqair, at the beginning of the 20th century the monastery counted sixty monks—all Greek. Over the following 125 years, the number dwindled to just a few dozen, most of them still Greek, as one monk recently confirmed to Alpheratz.
The monastery flies the Greek flag. The dispute concerns seventy-one parcels of land, including the land on which the monastery itself stands, along with agricultural plots, open lands, and areas containing churches, cells, and shrines of unique historical character in the regions of Mount Sinai, Mount Catherine, Mount Moses, Mount Transfiguration (or Mount of Supplication.)
Recognizing the monastery’s historical and spiritual value, Egypt requested that UNESCO inscribe the site—along with Mount Moses and surrounding lands—on the World Heritage List. UNESCO granted the request in 2002, establishing a framework of cooperation between the monastery and Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in any restoration or maintenance work, while acknowledging the monastery’s affiliation with the Greek Orthodox Church and its autonomy under ecclesiastical law.
This arrangement changed drastically after the recent court ruling, which confiscated nearly half of the monastery’s lands.
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From Presidential Assurances to Judicial Confiscation
On May 7, 2025, at a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi expressed his displeasure at the reports circulating at the time about possible negative measures by Egypt against the monastery. Sisi stressed that such an approach “contradicts Egypt’s principles and its spirit of tolerance,” and that Egypt is committed to the “eternal” covenant that binds it to the monastery, which holds the relics of Saint Catherine. He added that he would not allow Egyptian–Greek relations to be tampered with because of “malicious rumors.”
The scene changed three weeks later. On May 28, the Court of Appeals in Ismailia issued a ruling declaring the Egyptian state the owner of Saint Catherine’s Monastery and its lands. In its judgment, the court held that the monastery’s spiritual affiliation with the Greek Orthodox Church does not grant it any legal privileges within Egypt. Greece was mentioned only once in the ruling, in the context of demonstrating that Egypt guarantees freedom of belief and spiritual affiliation, just as Greece does.
The court based its ruling in favor of state ownership of the land on the grounds that the archbishop had failed to present any legal deed proving ownership, and had not registered the properties after the enactment of Law No. 147 of 1957, which prohibited acquiring state lands by prescription. The court considered the lack of registration over such a long period as implicit recognition of state ownership of the land, and that the archbishop merely occupied it in his religious capacity, based on his appointment decree and the Egyptian citizenship granted to him in 1974.
The court divided the disputed lands between the monastery and the Egyptian government into four sections:
First section: Eleven parcels of land outside the monastery boundaries, consisting of rocky desert areas with few trees. The court annexed these to the Saint Catherine Nature Reserve under the supervision of the Environmental Affairs Agency.
Second section: Twenty-nine parcels within the monastery’s grounds, including the monastery building itself and lands with churches and shrines. The court granted the monks and the archbishop the right of “religious possession” over these lands for residence and worship, while affirming they remain state property under the supervision of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Third section: Seventeen parcels containing small churches and monastic facilities covered by preliminary contracts between the monastery and the local municipality of Saint Catherine. The court ruled these contracts did not transfer ownership but only set out mutual obligations.
Fourth section: Twenty-five agricultural parcels, referred to by the court as “expulsion lands.” The court ordered the archbishop’s eviction from these lands, on the grounds that his occupation was “usurpation.” It added that service to the monastery does not justify breaking the law or seizing state rights, and that the archbishop, as a religious figure, should serve as an “example in respecting the law.”
With this ruling, the court consolidated the Egyptian state’s ownership of the monastery’s lands and its surroundings—lands that the monks have used since the 6th century—while granting them the right of use and religious possession within a defined scope, and placing all dispositions under the direct supervision of the Egyptian authorities.
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Political Shifts, Broken Agreements, and Greek Backlash
The contradiction between the position announced by the Egyptian president in Athens and the court ruling—which the Greeks described as turning the monks into “temporary guests” in their own permanent residence—was explained by a monk inside the monastery, who requested anonymity. He said it reflected a “sudden political shift” in the course of Egyptian–Greek relations. He added that the Egyptian authorities had reached an agreement with the Greek side guaranteeing the monastery’s ownership of its lands, and the agreement was scheduled to be signed between the Governor of South Sinai and the Archbishop of the monastery just two days before the ruling was issued. But Cairo pulled back at the last moment, before surprising both Greece and the monks with the court’s decision.
Archbishop Damianos referred to this reversal in statements he made to the Greek newspaper The National Herald two days after the ruling. He said: “An agreement had been reached with the Egyptian authorities, especially in South Sinai, with the participation of the Greek government. An official delegation came from Greece, and we agreed on a text that granted the monastery greater freedom to operate and recognition of certain rights—because life is not sustained by spirit alone; material needs also exist. Without lands, how can we live on donations alone? But after the agreement, they changed the text and presented us with something completely different.”
Following the archbishop’s lead, Greek officials intensified their criticism of the ruling. The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Ieronymos, described the decision as a “scandal representing the confiscation and expropriation of the monastery’s property.” In a statement published by Greek newspapers on May 30, 2025, he asserted that the Egyptian government had, “with the stroke of a pen, sought to erase the monastery’s presence, abolish its activities, worship, spirit, and culture, despite its prior commitments.”
The same commitments were cited by Archimandrite Porphyrios Frangakos, the monastery’s representative in Athens, who said the ruling “turns the monastery into a museum and undermines an agreement reached with Egypt in December 2024.” He revealed details of that agreement, saying: “We had prepared an out-of-court settlement with authorized representatives of the Egyptian government. Under it, Egypt recognized the monastery’s ownership of the seventy-one plots of land. Both sides accepted it, and it was ready for signature. The document circulated for months between Egyptian ministries, and we were ready to sign at any moment. Suddenly, the ruling came out—contradicting what had been agreed.”
By contrast, the Egyptian government—through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency—described the ruling as a “historic achievement,” since it determined for the first time the monastery’s legal status in a way that preserves its unique religious standing.
This stance angered the monks even further. In his comments to the Greek newspaper, the archbishop said the Egyptians “claim to love the monastery, but in reality they are strangling it.” He criticized the cancellation of the agreement on “flimsy pretexts,” despite President Sisi’s “clear” desire to sign it, stressing that the issue has an international dimension.
Amid this confusing backdrop, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published a report on June 1 suggesting that the ownership dispute was part of a broader Egyptian–Greek deal. The paper quoted Greek diplomatic sources saying that Cairo sought to exploit the lands surrounding the monastery within a tourism project, in exchange for advancing a strategic agreement with Athens to lay 1,000 kilometers of submarine cables to transmit clean electricity from Egypt to Greece and then to Europe—what is known as the “electricity interconnection project,” intended as an alternative to Russian gas.
This project is, in fact, not new. In October 2021, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding to build a giant electricity cable called “GREGY.” The agreement has since appeared in all joint statements and official talks between Cairo and Athens as one of the central pillars of their strategic cooperation.
A former Greek official revived this narrative to explain Egypt’s change of stance. Markos Bolaris, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Cultural and Ecclesiastical Affairs, claimed there was a “secret diplomatic deal” in which the monastery’s archbishop, “the elderly leader,” was involved, using the monastery as a bargaining chip in the energy negotiations. In a Facebook post, Bolaris accused the Greek government—“diplomatically weak and lacking national consciousness”—of bartering away the monastery, deceiving the public by creating a “Sinai Monastery” in Greece without informing the monks, and staging a “symbolic representation by the elderly archbishop who had no mandate from the mother monastery.”
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A Long Legal Battle Over Land Plots
The legal dispute over the monastery’s lands actually began in 2012, when former army general Ahmed Ragai Atiya filed seventy-two complaints against the monastery in a single day, following a verbal altercation with a monk. According to Rajai’s account, the clash erupted when he wanted to pray in an area outside those designated for (non-Christian?) prayer inside the monastery. His request was denied, and the monk reportedly told him: “The monastery is Greek land,” pointing to the Greek flag flying above it. Rajai considered this a provocation, which spurred him to launch a wide-ranging legal and media campaign that continued until his death in 2021.
During this campaign, Ragai accused the Greek monks of seizing around 20% of South Sinai’s lands and of building “Greek colonies” on them. In 2014, he published a book entitled Protocols of the Monks of Catherine, in which he called for reclaiming the lands and renaming them with Egyptian and Islamic names. Some figures close to the authorities later adopted these demands, including former head of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Mostafa El-Feki, who described the monastery as a “foreign colony” and urged placing it under the jurisdiction of the Egyptian Orthodox Church.
At first, the Egyptian government sided with the monastery against Atiya’s lawsuits, with its lawyers urging the court to reject his claims on the basis that he had no standing or interest in the case. But its stance soon shifted. In 2015, the Governor of South Sinai (Mohamed Khaled Fouda) and the head of the local municipality of Saint Catherine filed an independent lawsuit demanding the eviction of the monastery’s archbishop from twenty-nine parcels of land and their handover to the state, along with compensation of five million Egyptian pounds.
In 2016, the Ministry of Antiquities and the Environmental Affairs Agency joined the lawsuit, demanding that compensation be raised to ten million pounds and that the dispute be expanded to cover forty-two additional parcels—bringing the total to seventy-one parcels of land.
The judicial process produced two key rulings:
The first, issued by the South Sinai Primary Court in May 2022, ordered the archbishop’s eviction and the transfer of the lands to the state.
The second, issued by the Court of Appeals in May 2025, granted the monks usufruct rights but not ownership.
The final word now rests with the Court of Cassation, which is expected to deliver a definitive ruling in one of Egypt’s longest-running legal disputes over an exceptional religious and historical site.
Before the most recent (May) ruling, the unfinished agreement between Egypt and Greece aimed to close the chapter on the judicial disputes through a comprehensive settlement and reconciliation of mutual lawsuits, while upholding the UNESCO decision that inscribed the monastery and its properties on the World Heritage List. Yet the eight provisions of the agreement—revealed by Greek officials to Alpheratz—mostly gave right to the monastery, granting advantage to the Greek side over the Egyptian position, (without imposing any reciprocal concessions on the monastery.)
The agreement recognized the monastery’s ownership of the seventy-one parcels of land as belonging to the Greek Orthodox denomination. It also guaranteed its independence in managing its religious and administrative affairs under the leadership of its archbishop, who is officially recognized in Egypt as the Archbishop of Sinai. It stipulated joint supervision of any maintenance and construction works by the Egyptian authorities and the monastery’s administration, with an emphasis on preserving the site’s historic and spiritual character. The agreement also made brief reference to the “Great Transfiguration Project” announced by the Egyptian president in 2020 near the monastery, stating a commitment to develop surrounding areas under strict management consistent with Egypt’s obligations as a World Heritage site.
The Court of Appeals ruling froze that agreement. It granted the monks usufruct rights over forty-six parcels without ownership and evicted them from twenty-five others.
After the ruling, the Egyptian government signaled that the agreement could be revived. On August 8, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Aaty, during a visit to Athens, said that an understanding with Greece was imminent and that the official signing ceremony was “very close.” His Greek counterpart, George Gerapetritis, responded by expressing confidence in Cairo’s commitment to its promises.
Soon after, however, the dispute returned to the courts. In the second half of August, the monastery filed an appeal before the Court of Cassation against the ruling, and the Egyptian government submitted a parallel appeal, according to a lawyer from the Ministry of Antiquities (speaking anonymously to Alpheratz. This means that the fate of the monastery’s lands remains suspended, pending the judgment of the Court of Cassation.
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Sovereignty, Security, and the “National Interest” Narrative
The Ministry of Antiquities’ late intervention in 2016 in the legal dispute between the Governorate of South Sinai, the local municipality, and Saint Catherine’s Monastery came by direct instruction to take a position, according to an official ministry source who spoke to Alpheratz. The ministry formed a committee to examine the boundaries of the monastery’s historical lands, documented violations within areas subject to the Antiquities Protection Law, and asked the court to determine the legal status of the seventy-one parcels claimed by the archbishop. The source added that since 2010, the ministry—as the supervisory authority over archaeological sites—had identified violations by the monastery, including plantations, construction, and building works. Demolition orders were issued for many of them, but most were never carried out.
In contrast, a government source in the South Sinai Governorate—who requested anonymity—said: “The current crisis stems essentially from Archbishop Damianos’ desire to (affirm ownership of) the monastery’s lands in South Sinai.” He revealed that in 2004 the archbishop had submitted a formal request to the local municipality for (the Monastry’s) ownership of the monastery’s lands and surrounding areas, which were purchased from some Bedouins. The source described this as a “grave mistake,” since those lands—including the monastery’s historic building—had been registered as archaeological sites and natural reserves since the 1990s. Legally, they cannot be owned either by the monks or by the Bedouins, who are limited to usufruct rights under a system applied in Sinai for strategic reasons.
The source added that the contracts invoked by the monastery are “merely preliminary deeds issued by the city council for small plots not exceeding 50 to 75 square meters,” and do not cover the bulk of the lands at the heart of the legal dispute. He pointed out that some of these plots amounted to no more than a few scattered olive trees near the monastery, Mount Moses, and Farsh Elijah—not the large-scale farmland often claimed. On the judicial front, the source clarified that the recent Egyptian court ruling did not touch the monks’ presence or the archbishop’s status, saying: “The ruling was clear: live in the monastery, practice your rituals, you have full usufruct rights over the land—but it is not yours to own.”
Egypt’s stance affirming sovereignty and prohibiting ownership of monastery lands was supported by Mohamed Al-Kahlawi, member of the Higher Planning Committee of the (Prime-minister’s) Cabinet, and president of the Arab Council for the Union of Arab Archaeologists. He told Alpheratz that Saint Catherine’s Monastery falls under Egyptian sovereignty and that there is a “safety charter” for its monks that must be respected. But he stressed that Greece had never historically protected the monastery. He added: “For sovereignty reasons, the monastery’s lands cannot be owned by Greek monks.”
Al-Kahlawi cited an incident following the Camp David Accords, when a senior Israeli army officer and his wife were killed in a car accident while visiting the monastery, and were buried there. With waves of Israeli tourists arriving to turn the grave into a shrine, former president Hosni Mubarak intervened and ordered the cemetery removed to prevent it from becoming a pilgrimage site. Al-Kahlawi said he fears Israel could be involved in fueling the controversy over Saint Catherine’s lands: “Israel’s ambitions in Sinai never stop, and we face an enemy always lying in wait.”
Former ambassador Bilal Al-Masry agreed with Al-Kahlawi’s view. In a study entitled “The Sovereignty Crisis over Saint Catherine’s Monastery: An Egyptian National Security Issue” published in June 2025, Al-Masry underscored Sinai’s exceptional importance as Egypt’s military and security hub, requiring its full subordination to Egyptian sovereignty and constant monitoring of all foreign elements there—whether monks of the monastery or members of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) stationed in Sinai since 1982, which includes about 1,700 soldiers and 15 U.S. civilian observers.
The former ambassador argued that ownership of the monastery by the monks, under any scenario, would place them outside the reach of Egypt’s security measures and sovereignty considerations, turning the monastery into “a security loophole that will widen over time” and risk losing control over Sinai. He added that this danger is compounded by reports of Saudi Arabia’s intention to allow a U.S. base on Tiran Island serving both American and Israeli interests, placing the Saint Catherine issue at the heart of the regional security equation.
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Deepening Divisions Inside the Monastery
The situation inside the walls of St. Catherine’s Monastery was no less confusing than the official Egyptian position toward its crisis. While Cairo backed away at the last minute from an agreement to transfer ownership of the monastery’s lands to the Greek Orthodox community, the recent court ruling lifted the curtain on deep divisions between the monks and their Archbishop Damianos—divisions driven by overlapping religious, political, and financial calculations.
Damianos traveled to Greece after the court’s ruling granting ownership of the monastery’s lands to the Egyptian state. Two months later, on July 28, 2025, the Archbishop of St. Catherine’s Monastery delivered a speech in the Greek Parliament thanking the members of the Education and Religious Affairs Committee for approving a draft law submitted by the Minister of Education, aimed at granting the monastery recognition in Greece as a public institution. On July 30, 2025, the monks responded by announcing Damianos’ dismissal through a statement, obtained by Alpheratz, signed by fifteen monks. In it, they declared the removal of their ninety-one-year-old Archbishop and formally notified the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III—who, according to the monastery’s statutes, holds the ultimate authority to appoint or dismiss an Archbishop—asking him to formally ratify their decision.
According to one monk who spoke to Alpheratz from inside the monastery, the Greek law, along with the Egyptian ruling, was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” pushing the monks to act in order to save the monastery and preserve its independence as a religious institution with a special status, akin to the Vatican.
The monk explained that Damianos had made only a very brief visit to the monastery on July 25, 2025—three days before his speech in the Greek Parliament—staying just a few minutes before leaving for the guesthouse adjacent to the monastery. During that visit, his lawyer spoke briefly with the monks about the law, but they demanded to see the text before it was put to a vote. A group of monks also requested a meeting with the Archbishop at the guesthouse to discuss the expulsion of three monks and their replacement with others. The meeting took place on July 26 in the evening, attended by Damianos’ lawyer, but lasted only minutes. The monks pressed him to resign or face dismissal. Damianos soon returned to Athens. On the very day he addressed Parliament, the monks sent a letter to the Greek Minister of Education rejecting the draft law they had never been shown. On July 29, Parliament gave its final approval to the law, and the next day, the monks issued their decision to dismiss Damianos.
The monk added: “The monastery and its monks are paying the price of the Archbishop’s gradual health decline, which has left an administrative and spiritual vacuum exploited by opportunists who have misused the monastery’s affairs unlawfully, amid direct intervention by an Egyptian sovereign body and obvious indifference from the Greek state.” He added that the Archbishop has lived almost permanently in Greece for years, visiting the monastery only a handful of times annually for short stays, usually residing outside its walls, and missing major celebrations, including the Feast of St. Catherine, which he skipped in 2022 and 2023, attending only briefly in 2024 before leaving immediately after the liturgy.
The monk stressed that the monastery is in disarray due to the absence of a higher authority overseeing monastic life and managing spiritual and administrative matters. He accused Damianos of pursuing “worldly gains” by disposing of monastery funds and selling its properties without informing or obtaining the approval of the monastic council. He cited, as examples, the Archbishop’s recent unilateral sale of two monastery properties in Athens and Thessaloniki, violating the very statutes he himself set when elected Archbishop of Sinai in 1973. He also pointed to a separate agreement signed by Damianos alone—after being rejected by the monks in 2017—that granted the University of California rights to digitize the monastery’s rare manuscripts without the monastery’s oversight. According to the monk, in 2020, Cairo airport authorities arrested the son of Damianos’ secretary on charges of misappropriating the digital materials, including seizing all electronic devices such as computers and hard drives. This scandal damaged the monastery’s reputation in Egypt and halted its digitization projects. The matter remains under investigation by Egyptian authorities following official complaints filed by the monks. Alpheratz has not been able to confirm the outcome of those investigations.
According to the monk, “The Egyptian authorities want to seize control of the monastery’s lands, while the archbishop seeks to transfer his authority to Greece.” He described the Egyptian court ruling as “disastrous” because it places the monks of the monastery in a fragile position compared to other monasteries in Egypt: This is because only the archbishop holds Egyptian citizenship, while the other foreign monks live on renewable annual permits that can be revoked at any time—something that has in fact happened several times already. This, he said, paves the way for the eventual dissolution of the Sinai brotherhood, “the Monks of Sinai,” whether by refusing to renew current monks’ permits, granting residency to other monks, or gradually ceasing to grant residency altogether—opening the door to turning the monastery into an “archaeological museum” by official decree.
But the monk considered the law passed by Greece in August 2025 at the archbishop’s request to be “even more dangerous.” That law created a public institution in Athens under the name “The Independent Greek Orthodox Monastery of Mount Sinai” and granted it sweeping powers to manage the monastery’s funds, donations, and pilgrimages.
The monk also pointed to other financial irregularities by the archbishop. He failed to collect revenues from the monastery’s properties and institutions in Greece, effectively handing the entire monastery and its assets to Greece “on a silver platter.” As an example, in 2024 the official revenues from the monastery’s premises in Athens amounted to around €539,000. Of that, the monastery itself received only about €61,000—“like a beggar’s share”—while the archbishop personally received roughly €63,000, with the fate of the remaining funds unknown.
This internal division gave rise to diverging political interpretations. For example, Greek writer and political analyst Nikos Meletis criticized the monks’ position. In an article published in Proto Thema on August 3, 2025, he argued that their stance served Egypt’s interests. A supporter of the archbishop and of the Greek government’s position in the crisis, Meletis warned that this internal revolt could weaken the Greek front and hand Cairo an additional card of leverage. By contrast, the monk stressed that the monks opposed both the Egyptian ruling and the Greek law, viewing both as infringements on the monastery’s independence and encroachments on its property.
Archbishop Damianos, however, did not back down. From his residence in Athens, he described his opponents as traitors, while the monks in South Sinai continued their legal and diplomatic efforts to annul the law and proceeded with electing an interim leadership for the monastery.
The scene shifted again with the archbishop’s sudden return to the monastery in late August. He expelled his opponents, barred them from the monastery’s grounds, and declared in a recorded statement that “the monastery has returned to legitimacy and canonical order.” Meanwhile, eight monks filed complaints with Egyptian police, demanding to be allowed back into the monastery and for investigations into allegations that they had been assaulted by the archbishop’s entourage. As a result, worship at the monastery ceased, and its doors were closed to pilgrims and visitors.
On September 2, 2025, the Greek government dispatched its representative Giorgos Kalantzis to the monastery, carrying a proposal that seemed like an official withdrawal of support for the archbishop. The Greek proposal called for the Holy Synod to convene on September 7 to elect his successor. But the archbishop did not respond. Kalantzis returned to Greece without reaching an agreement. Meanwhile, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem summoned the archbishop to appear before it to answer for violations inside the monastery—a summons Damianos also rejected. Instead, on September 4 he issued a statement declaring that he had begun procedures to choose his successor in coordination with several churches and with the knowledge of the Greek government.
Two Egyptian government sources revealed that Egypt’s security services maintained neutrality and did not intervene to support either the archbishop or the monks. However, discussions were held between Egyptian officials, the archbishop, and the monks to contain the crisis and reopen the monastery to tourists. This led to the removal of several bodyguards who had accompanied the archbishop on his return, paving the way for reopening the monastery and for the archbishop to leave for Greece without facing investigation over the monks’ accusations. Indeed, on September 6, Greece sent a private plane that transported the archbishop, his secretary, and nine loyal monks to Athens, enabling the monastery’s gates to reopen and its monks to return—thus closing the chapter on Damianos.
From Greece, Damianos reappeared. On September 8, he issued a statement calling on all monks of the monastery to unite in rejecting the Egyptian court ruling and to elect his successor on September 14, 2025. “I am making my personal decision to resign,” he said. “The election must be a new starting point for the monastery’s long journey.”
Researcher on church and ecumenical affairs Gerges Hanna told Alpheratz that Archbishop Damianos’ departure and the Egyptian government’s neutral stance in his dispute with the monks pave the way for legal regularization of St. Catherine’s Monastery’s lands, which for centuries lacked any formal ownership documents. Hanna added that the anticipated Egypt–Greece agreement will not affect the monastery itself or the continuity of worship within it, but rather enhance shared benefits given St. Catherine’s religious, touristic, and cultural significance worldwide. He stressed that the choice of a new archbishop will be a key step toward signing an agreement that frames each side’s rights regarding the monastery, leaving the monks responsible for negotiating with the Greek side over the management of its properties.
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Toward a Legal Settlement, or Another Chapter of Dispute?
Amid these overlapping disputes, the former Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, summarized the core of the crisis: the Egyptian state aims to advance its project of the “Tri-Faith Complex.” This idea dates back to President Anwar al-Sadat’s 1979 visit to Sinai. The monks, however, remain firmly opposed to any encroachment on the site or its surrounding lands, which they consider their historical property. Abdel Maqsoud told Al-Furats that “involving the monastery in investment projects is what ignited the crisis. The building itself is not the issue—rather, the problem lies in the surrounding lands, which the state plans to exploit as part of its tourism development projects in South Sinai.”
The project was launched in July 2020, when Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, during a visit to the monastery, announced that he had been tasked by the President to begin immediate development of St. Catherine’s city. He promised that development would respect the sanctity of the holy valley and the natural reserve. In September 2020, President Sisi gave the project its name: “The Great Transfiguration Over the Land of Peace.”
Maher Estino, a member of the Supreme Planning Committee of the Council of Ministers and consultant to the Transfiguration Project, emphasized that the project does not touch the archaeological part of the monastery or its sanctity. He told Alpheratz: “We did not encroach upon the closed archaeological or environmental zones. We worked only inside the ruined city. Not a single brick was built inside the monastery or its perimeter.” He explained that St. Catherine had long been a “forgotten city,” receiving limited numbers of tourists who would climb Mount Sinai and briefly visit the monastery before leaving, often littering and damaging the environment. With no tourist services and agriculture decimated by drought and scarce rainfall, the city had languished.
According to Estino, the project was designed to maximize the site’s potential while preserving its spiritual and environmental uniqueness. Plans include an underground eco-lodge with 200 rooms, a mountain hotel with 150 rooms, a visitor center, and a “Peace Square” able to host about 420 people—all built underground to protect the visual landscape. The asphalt road through Wadi al-Arbaeen would be removed and turned into a camel trail, 7,000 olive trees planted under the supervision of the monks, and 11 kilometers of pedestrian paths created. Movement inside the area would be restricted to electric vehicles only.
The project also addressed local living conditions: retaining traditional markets, converting main streets into pedestrian walkways, and installing new networks for sewage, electricity, and water—including a new pipeline with a capacity of 5,000 cubic meters per day (up from 800) and a desalination plant. Responding to criticism about concrete use, Estino said: “Integration with the environment doesn’t mean building domes—it can be achieved by hiding the structures underground within the terrain.” He insisted that the project had already received the approval of the monastery’s monks, UNESCO, and the local population.
Like other stakeholders, UNESCO has not maintained a consistent stance. During a visit in August 2023, Nuria Sanz, head of UNESCO’s Cairo office, praised Egypt’s efforts, describing the project as environmentally protective, sustainable, and positive for tourism while respecting the site’s natural and spiritual character. But before the July 2025 World Heritage Committee meeting in Paris, the watchdog group “Heritage Watch” accused UNESCO of leniency toward Egypt, urging an urgent review and calling for St. Catherine’s to be placed on the list of endangered sites.
Under this pressure, UNESCO shifted its position at the Committee’s 47th session, voicing clear reservations and calling for a comprehensive heritage and environmental impact assessment, a halt to new interventions until the study’s completion, a full tourism management plan, and a detailed state report on implementation by 1 February 2026.
Nevertheless, Saleh Lam‘i, a UNESCO restoration expert, told Alpheratz that these recommendations are unlikely to yield tangible results at the 48th session, given Egypt’s near-completion of the project and presidential directives for its imminent inauguration.
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Between unresolved court rulings, a new archbishop still finding his footing, and a monastery that has survived 15 centuries of invasions and shifting rulers, St. Catherine’s now stands at an uncertain crossroads. Once able to maintain independence by carefully balancing ties between Cairo and Athens, the monastery now faces the weight of Egyptian sovereignty and shifting international positions. With governments altering stances to match their interests, and heritage organizations wavering between support and criticism, the future of this ancient spiritual beacon remains suspended—caught between politics and history.
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Translated from:
https://alpheratzmag.com/reports/أزمة-دير-سانت-كاترين/
(Subtitles added)
