CAIRO (Update 5) - Christians gathered on Sunday to pay final respects to Pope Shenouda III, who sought to soothe sectarian tension in his four decades atop Egypt's Orthodox Church but saw increasing flareups in the majority Muslim nation in the last months of his life. Shenouda had served as the 117th Pope of Alexandria since November 1971, leading the Orthodox community who make up most of Egypt's Christians. His funeral will be held on Tuesday, Egyptian state media reported. US President Barack Obama offered his condolences and Pope Benedict, leader of the world's Roman Catholics, offered prayers after being informed of his death. "I would like to express to the members of the Holy Synod, to the priests and to the faithful of the Patriarchy, my strongest feelings of fraternal compassion," said Benedict. Describing Shenouda as a long-time advocate of unity among Christians, he said the Catholic Church "shares the pain afflicting Orthodox Copts." Thousands of Christians queued in Cairo's Abbasiya district overnight and on Sunday morning at the cathedral where Shenouda's body was initially laid in a coffin and later seated on a ceremonial throne wearing gold and red embroidered religious vestments, a golden mitre on his head and holding a gold-topped staff. He was popular among many of Egypt's Christians even outside the Orthodox Church, as well as among many Muslims. In one phrase Shenouda often repeated and which was also cited in newspapers on Sunday, he would say: "Egypt is not a nation we live in, rather it is a nation that lives in us." The burial is expected to take place at the Wadi el Natrun monastery in the desert northwest of Cairo, where the late pope had requested he be buried. Shenouda was banished to Wadi el Natrun monastery in 1981 by then-President Anwar Sadat after he criticised the government's handling of an Islamic insurgency in the 1970s and Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel. "We will remember Pope Shenouda III as a man of deep faith, a leader of a great faith, and an advocate for unity and reconciliation," the US president said in a statement issued by the White House. Obama said Shenouda had been committed to national unity and was "a beloved leader of Egypt's Coptic Christians and an advocate for tolerance and religious dialogue." The head of Egypt's ruling military council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, granted Christians working in state institutions three days of mourning, state media reported. Bishop Bakhomious, head of the church of Bahaira, a district in the Nile Delta north of Cairo, will temporally hold the post of pope for two months until a new leader is elected. Egyptian media described the procedure for choosing a new pope as one based on a system of voting by board members of the church's city councils. The councils vote on three preferred candidates, and the final choice is made when a name is picked out of a box by a young child, the media said.
