Egypt in 1968: Between defeat and search

On April 2, 1968, Egypt still lived under the weight of the humiliation of the Six-Day War. In June 1967, Israel had destroyed Egyptian aviation on land in a few hours and occupied Sinai in six days. President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic leader of the panarabyss, had promised to resign after the defeat but the people had gone out to ask him to stay. The country carried its wounded pride in a state of collective shock.

In this context, in a working-class neighborhood in northern Cairo called Zeitoun - which means "olive" in Arabic - something began to happen at the dome of a small Coptoorthodox church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. What happened there over the next three years has no precedent in the history of Marian apparitions.

The church of Zeitoun: a place with history

The Coptoorthodox church of Santa Maria in Zeitoun was built between 1924 and 1925. According to the Coptic Christian tradition, the Zeitoun neighborhood is close to the place where the Holy Family - Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus - rested during their flight to Egypt. Local legend says the Virgin promised to return to that place. For the Copts, who consider themselves the direct heirs of the first disciples of Mark, the presence of the Virgin on her land has a particular symbolic burden.

In 1968, the church was frequented mainly by the Copts of the neighborhood. Zeitoun was a working-class district, densely populated, with neighbors of different denominations: Copts, Sunni Muslims, a small Catholic community. It was not a place of pilgrimage known or of special religious fame.

The first witness: a Muslim mechanic

Zeitoun's apparition began in the most unlikely way: the first person to see the figure was a Muslim worker. On the night of April 2, 1968, shortly before 9: 00 p.m., Farouk Mohammed Atwa, a bus mechanic who worked at the workshop next to the church, looked up to the church dome and thought he saw a woman dressed in white standing on the dome in the air. He thought he was a person who was going to jump. He shouted to his companions, "There's a woman on the roof!"

Other workers looked. They saw her, too. Someone called the police, thinking it was an imminent suicide. The police arrived and also saw it: a bright, white figure on the top of the church dome. But the figure did not move like a person to jump: it floated over the dome, immobile, radiating a light that did not seem electric.

In a few hours, the news spread through the neighborhood and the crowd began to gather. It was just the beginning.

What the witnesses saw

The testimonies of the thousands of witnesses who over three years saw Zeitoun's apparitions are remarkably consistent with each other, despite the great diversity of observers: Copts, Muslims, Jews, atheists, foreign tourists, journalists, doctors, government officials.

The figure was invariably described as a luminous woman, dressed in white or light blue, who appeared on the domes and crosses of the church. Sometimes he was still, with his arms stretched out. Other times he walked slowly on the roof of the church or leaned towards the crowd. In some apparitions it was accompanied by smaller figures that some identified as angels or doves of light.

The presence of light pigeons flying around the figure was often described without shaking the wings, describing circles. Some witnesses also saw a kind of incense clouds rising from the dome without any visible source of that smoke.

Witnesses who could not lie

What makes Zeitoun an unparalleled case in Marian history is the nature of his witnesses. They were not pilgrims who had gone to see a religious phenomenon predisposed to believe. They were mostly people who passed by, neighbors of the neighborhood who got out of work, police sent to control the crowd, skeptical journalists sent to deny a popular superstition.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of the Socialist and Arab Egypt, whose relationship with the Coptic Church was at least ambivalent, visited the place of apparition. Witnesses present at that visit stated that the president saw the luminous figure. He made no public statement on the matter, but did not attempt to prohibit meetings or to discredit the phenomenon.

The Egyptian state newspaper Al@-@ Ahram, the official spokesman for the nasserist regime, published photographs of the apparition and testimonies of journalists who had witnessed it. A Marxist newspaper would not have done that with a phenomenon that considered a religious fraud.

The Egyptian government's investigation

The Nasser government commissioned an official investigation of the police and the Ministry of the Interior. The stated objective was to find a rational explanation: hidden projectors, holograms, an elaborate trap mounted by the Coptic Church. The researchers examined the roof and interior of the church, the buildings around, the electrical system of the neighborhood. They didn't find anything.

The police investigation certified that there was no physical mechanism that could explain the phenomenon. The technicians ruled out the possibility of light projections: the figure was visible from multiple angles simultaneously, making any known optical projection impossible. The Egyptian government issued a statement recognizing that the phenomenon had been observed by thousands of people and that there was no known technical or physical explanation.

The response of the churches

Coptic Pope Cyril VI was informed on the same day as the first apparition. On 4 May 1968, just a month later, he issued an official statement recognizing the apparitions as authentic from the point of view of the Coptic faith. The speed of this statement - especially for an institution such as the Coptic Church, of a cautious and conservative nature - gives an idea of the strength of the testimonies that the Patriarch had received.

The Catholic Church of Rome did not issue a formal declaration of authenticity, since Zeitoun is a Copto- Orthodox, non-Catholic church. But neither did he oppose or discredit the phenomenon. The Holy See treated him with respect for a phenomenon recognized by a sister Christian Church.

The interreligious dimension: a sign for all

One of the most extraordinary aspects of Zeitoun is that the Virgin appeared in a country of Muslim majority, on a Christian church, and was seen by people of all confessions and none. This fact has a theological depth that has not been sufficiently explored.

Islam venerates Mary - Maryam - as the most noble of women, as the virgin mother of the prophet Isa (Jesus). The Koran devotes to Mary a whole sura (Sura XIX, "Maryam"). For the Muslim witnesses of Zeitoun, seeing the luminous figure on the dome of the church was not a contradiction to their faith: it was the confirmation of something they already believed, Maryam's unique honor.

"We saw it clearly. She was a woman of light. I have no doubt it was Maryam, Isa's blessed mother. My religion teaches me to respect it. What I saw that night made me pray."
- Testimony of a Muslim witness from Zeitoun, collected by journalist Ibrahim Farid in 1968

Photographs and footage

Zeitoun is the Marian apparition with the most visual documentation in history. Hundreds of photographs taken by different people, on different nights, with different cameras, show luminous figures on the church's domes. Some of these photographs were published in the international press. None has been proved to be forgery.

The analysis of the available photographs shows consistency in the description of the figure: its position on the domes, its own luminosity (not reflected), and its visibility from multiple angles simultaneously. The photo experts consulted by the researchers found no evidence of manipulation.

• 2 April 1968 First apparition, seen by the Muslim mechanic Farouk Atwa and his companions. The police are called to the place and also observe the phenomenon.
• 4 May 1968 Coptic Pope Cyril VI issues official statement recognizing the apparitions. It is one of the fastest ecclesiastical recognitions in Marian history.
• Mayo-junio 1968 The apparitions are photographed by the Egyptian and international press. The state newspaper Al@-@ Ahram publishes images and testimonies.
• 1968-1969 More intense period: the apparitions occur several nights per week, some for hours. An estimated one to five million total witnesses.
• 1970 Apparitions decrease in frequency and intensity.
• 1971 The apparitions are definitely over. The total duration is approximately three years.

Zeitoun and the context of the 20th century

Zeitoun's apparition occurred at a historic moment marked by Western secularization, the rise of Marxism, the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the discredit of religion in broad sectors of developed societies. In this context, a Marian phenomenon visible to millions of people in Socialist and Arab Cairo has a particular symbolic force: the Virgin did not choose to appear in a European sanctuary full of believers, but on an African church before a heterodox crowd, in an Arab and Muslim city, in a country governed by a secular regime.

The choice of place and time cannot be separated from meaning: if in Kibeho the Virgin spoke to the marginalized of Central Africa, in Zeitoun she spoke to the Arab world and to all those who in the twentieth century had declared that God did not exist or that religion was the opium of the people. He manifested himself without words, without written messages, without asking for anything: only being seen.

The Shrine of Zeitoun today

The church of Santa Maria in Zeitoun is still standing in the same neighborhood of Cairo. Since 1968 it is a pilgrimage place for the Copts of Egypt and the diaspora, who visit it especially in August, during the Feasts of the Assumption of the Virgin in the Coptic Liturgical Calendar. Some testimonies of minor apparitions continued to be collected in the years after 1971, although none with the intensity and frequency of those of the 1968-1969 period.

In 2009, new luminous apparitions were recorded in the same church, this time also photographed and filmed with mobile phones. The phenomenon lasted several months and was again recognized by the Coptic Church. Zeitoun's tradition seems to be kept alive in the same place where it began that night in April 1968, when a Muslim mechanic looked up and thought he saw a woman on the roof.

"There is no technical or scientific explanation for what was observed by thousands of people for months. The phenomenon existed."
- Official communiqué of the Egyptian government following the police investigation, 1968