Coptic Pope Meets Catholic Pope

Coptic Pope Tawadros II, elected late last year, is visiting the Vatican for his first foreign trip since his installation, and is meeting with the nerwly elected Roman Catholic Pope, Francis I.

It is 40 years since Pope Shenouda III went to the Vatican and met with Pope Paul VI in 1973; that was the first meeting of the Coptic and Catholic leaders since the churches split after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. Pope John Paul II also met with Pope Shenouda in Cairo in 2000 while visiting the Middle East, but it is the first trip to the Vatican by a Coptic Pope since that 1973 visit.

If we could have gotten Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to drop by they'd have had three Popes in the Vatican at once.