Wise officials in the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, together with their flock, who appreciate the value of citizenship and have a great sense of belonging to the motherland, should swiftly act whenever baseless rumours concerning a Coptic female or male prompt angry young Copts to protest at Saint Mark's Cathedral in el-Abbasia, Cairo. The protesters refuse to disperse until the alleged problem is resolved; if not, the protests can turn angry. A new development is that these protests now happen in the absence of Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The latest unhappy example was when the wife of a priest in Deir Mawas village, Minya in Upper Egypt, ran away from home family for personal reasons. Her disappearance fuelled rumours that she had been abducted by Muslims and converted to Islam. Coptic demonstrators decided to hold a vigil in Saint Mark's until she returned. Pope Shenouda, who is undergoing one of his regular medical check-ups in the US, apparently followed developments in the saga of the woman's disappearance very closely. The fuming crowds calmed down when the ‘victim' revealed the real reason why she'd decided to abandon her husband. In the meantime, priests in Minya threatened to demonstrate to compel the city's governor and local municipality to allow them to proceed with illegal constructions inside a church there. The confrontation abated when high-ranking officials persuaded the angry priests to respect the law. Coptic protests seem to be planned as a mechanism to exercise pressure on the Government to appreciate their demands, whether they are reasonable or not. The Government could help prevent this trend by banning protests inside churches, just as they are banned inside mosques. If it doesn't do so, it would be sending the wrong message to radical Copts.
