The top three candidates for the seat of the 118th pope of the Coptic Church have been announced.
Bishop Rafael, the bishop of downtown Cairo; Father Rafael Ava Mina; and Bishop Tawadros of the Beheira Governorate in the Nile Delta received the most votes and will be entered into the lottery. One name will be chosen to become the pope by a blindfolded child, as per church custom.
Bishop Pachomius, the acting Pope, said in a press conference that 2,256 voters casted their ballots today, out of a total 2,417 eligible voters. He added that turnout was 93.393 percent. 161 church members didn’t vote, and there were two invalid votes.
Bishop Rafael won the most votes with 1,980. Bishop Tawadros came in second with 1,623 votes, and Father Rafael Ava Mina took 1,530.
The other two candidates, Father Pachomious al-Suriani and Father Seraphim al-Souriani, garnered 305 and 130 votes, respectively.
Ballot boxes for the first round of voting in the Coptic Church’s papal election closed at exactly 5 pm on Monday afternoon.
Voting numbers significantly dropped off in the last few hours of the voting day, with the majority of voters arriving early in the morning.
Voter participation in the papal elections at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Abbasseya had already reached 50 percent three hours after the start of voting, according to a report by Hadaf, an Egyptian network aiming to enhance the integrity of elections.
A number of judges were selected to supervise the polling boxes, including Mansy Thabet Barsoom, Maher Sami, Nasser al-Barbary, Magued Gobran, and Chancellor Sobhi Girgis.
Meguid Adib, the head of the National Center for Human Rights and the coordinator of Hadaf network, said, “The experience of watching the 118 papal elections is new and rich, amid the changes undergone by the Egyptian society.”
“For the church to allow the presence of journalists and representatives of civil society organizations is an important step toward enriching the experience and reporting what is going on inside the elections to the society, as well as the emphasis on transparency pursued by the Election Commission since the announcement of opening the candidacy for the papal chair,” he added.
Coptic voters began casting their ballots early on Monday to choose the 118th head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the first papal election in 41 years.
The new leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church will succeed Pope Shenouda III, who died in March and left behind a community increasingly anxious about its status under an Islamist-led government.
Five candidates — two bishops and three monks — are vying to become the next pope.
The candidates are Bishop Rafael, 54, a medical doctor and current assistant bishop for central Cairo; Bishop Tawadros of the Nile Delta governorate of Beheira, 60; Father Rafael Ava Mina, the oldest of the five candidates at 70; Father Seraphim al-Souriani, 53; and Father Pachomious al-Suriani, 49.
Tight security measures and high turnout by media outlets are vivid at the papal headquarters at Abbasseya Cathedral in Cairo. Nearly 300 young volunteers have been deployed at the voting area to assist voters. A documentary recounting the life of Pope Shenouda III is being played at the electors’ waiting tents.
The names of the top three vote-getters will then be written on separate pieces of paper and placed in a box on the altar of St. Mark's Cathedral in Cairo. On 4 November, a child will be blindfolded and asked to choose one of the papers.
The person chosen will be enthroned in a ceremony on 18 November.
