The Wadi Al-Natrun Monastery monks attended the sermon of Pope Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the Saint Mark Episcopate, the day before yesterday at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Abbaseya, after a boycott of more than 30 years of ideological difference between the Pope and the late Rev. Matta el-Miskin, the Godfather of the monastery's monks. In his sermon, the Pope asked the audience to welcome the monks. Then he announced that he will go tomorrow to the United States to have some tests and X-rays done at Cleveland Hospital. The Pope said: “There will be no sermon next week. I don't know how long I will stay, as the doctors will determine this. If they say five minutes, then its only five minutes I will stay.”
The Pope pointed to the difference between Matthew and Luke's Gospels as regards the genealogy of Christ, pointing out that the laws of the Old Testament stipulated that, in the event a husband dies without having children, one of his brothers should marry his widow and give the first born child the name of the diseased brother. “That is why some genealogies are natural and others are legitimate,” the Pope said.