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Repose of Metropolitan Abba Marcos

Fr John Salter writes:
Abba Marcos died on 11th May 2008 in the Hospital of Our Lady of Good Remedy while visiting Barcelona. He was born in Holland on 20th August 1923. He had become a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church and was tonsured as a monk of the St. Bishoy Monastery in Wadi El Natrun, and was the first European to be consecrated a Bishop in the Coptic Patriarchate in 1974. He became Metropolitan of Marseilles, Toulon and All France and lived the eremetical life at the Hermitage of St. Marc, Fontanieu, Le Revest Les Eaux, France.

In his time as a bishop he accomplished a great deal. He established the Coptic Church in France, which now comprises several parishes. He ordained two Egyptian priests and ten French priests. He also planted the Coptic Church in his native Netherlands in 1976; in Belgium and in German-speaking Switzerland in 1983. He built the hermitage in Toulon and this became the seat of his diocese and it was dedicated to Our Lady of Zeitoun, who had appeared in Cairo in the 1960s. He set up at the hermitage a Coptic library and a museum of Coptic Art and established in Venice, the City of St. Mark, the Centro Culturo Coptico, in 1980 and another foundation at Porto in 2001.

He was indefatigable in his travels to ecumenical meetings in London, Venice, Toulon, Ireland, Zurich and Sweden, acting upon the Common Statement drawn up by His Holiness Pope Paul VI and His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, and signed in the Vatican in 1973.

Abba Marcos was an antiquarian who collected religious artefacts and antiques and relics of the saints. He was fond of reading particularly the lives of the saints, and of classical music. Some of his last joys were when he joined with Pope Shenouda III in celebrating the Apparitions of the Mother of God at Zeitoun, a suburb of Cairo. In his latter years he visited the Patriarch of Moscow and All The Russias, His Holiness Alexis II, in Moscow and the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, His Eminence Archbishop Andre Vingt-Trois.

His Eminence Metropolitan Marcos was a regular visitor to the Coptic church in Abingdon Road, London, and was well known in Anglican and Catholic circles in London and in other towns where the Copts have established churches.

May Abba Marcos' memory be eternal!