Balancing Act for Pope in Egypt: Outreach to Muslims, and Speaking Out for Christians<br />Vatican released that Especially from a point of view of religious freedom, we must consider all citizens the same.<br />Samir said that So he simply passed to other things,<br />Francis will lend his support to Egypt’s roughly 250,000 Catholics<br />and insist on the protection of minority rights, including those of its nearly 10 million Coptic Christians, in a meeting Friday with Mr. Sisi, according to Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian-born Jesuit priest who has seen the pope’s prepared remarks.<br />It is perhaps no accident that he drew attention to his remarks about Christian martyrs last weekend by comparing the Greek refugee camp — where he<br />said he met the Muslim husband of the slain Christian woman — to a "concentration camp." His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, was less adroit.<br />By JASON HOROWITZAPRIL 27, 2017<br />Pope Francis departed from his prepared remarks at a special prayer service honoring Christian martyrs in Rome last weekend to tell the<br />story of a Muslim man who watched Islamist terrorists cut the throat of his Christian wife because she refused to discard her crucifix.<br />Last June, Father Samir, the Egyptian priest and a leading Catholic scholar of Islam,<br />met with the pope to talk about Islam at the pope’s apartment in Vatican City.
