Agreement on Sinai Monastery enters final stage – What the new framework provides

Officials in Sinai, Cairo and Athens believe that negotiations on the future legal status of Saint Catherine’s Monastery are entering their final stage, with only the details of implementation remaining to be settled.

“We have reached the point at which the Sinai brotherhood will respond to the Egyptian state’s latest positions, which were sent in early August. The process will then move toward the final signatures,” a source familiar with the negotiations said.

“There was some delay because of the Dormition feast, according to both the New and Old Calendars, which Cairo and Athens fully understand,” the source added, according to Ta Nea .

According to Church sources, the central element of the agreement, which has now been broadly accepted, provides for a form of “dual ownership.”

The Sinai brotherhood will retain the exclusive and permanent right to occupy, use and operate the Monastery’s movable and immovable property for religious purposes. However, it will not be permitted to transfer, alter or commercially exploit the Monastery’s historic properties or its unique archaeological and Byzantine treasures.

The opinion of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority will also…