Memory Eternal: Dr Fouad Megally

Fr John Salter, Chairman, in Chrysostom, Pascha 2012, writes:


I first met Dr. Fouad in 1974 or thereabouts, some thirty-seven years ago, when I was General Secretary and later Chairman of the Committee of the Anglican & Eastern Churches Association. He was the representative on the committee of the Pre-Chalcedonian Churches, being himself a Copt. He also served in the same capacity on the committee of the Society of St. John Chrysostom. Fouad was highly regarded by the representatives of other Churches. I got to know him very well over the years and it was through the Megally family that I met Christopher Morris, in whose memory the Christopher Morris lecture was inaugurated – the Megally family lived in the same block at Dolphin Square as Christopher.

I got to know the family over the years and it was a great pleasure for me to be asked to take part in the wedding of his daughter, Janet, at the Coptic church of St. Mark in Allen Street, Kensington. Sadly Fouad's delightful wife, Nancy, the daughter of a Coptic priest, died relatively young, and this was a severe blow to Fouad and their three children.

Fouad witnessed the great spiritual revival in the Coptic Orthodox Church under the charismatic leadership of the Pope and Patriarch Shenouda III, and it was due to Fouad's influence that Pope Shenouda made his first visit to London. I remember lending a suitably throne-like chair for the Patriarch to sit on during his consecration of the church in Allen Street.

From time to time I would run into Fouad at the Athenaeum and we always promised to meet again for dinner, but we left it too late. A good man has been taken from the Coptic and indeed the whole 
Christian community in London. Our prayers are with his sons Roger and Hanna and his daughter Janet in their sad loss.