*Vatican document puts Orthodox Pope Shenouda III on warpath*

 From correspondents in Cairo

July 15, 2007 04:54am
Article from: Reuters

POPE Shenouda III, the head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox church,
criticised Pope Benedict today over a Vatican document asserting
Catholic primacy, saying his pride in Catholicism was making him enemies.

“The man (Pope Benedict) makes enemies every time. In his first
statements a few months back, he lost all the Muslims. And now this
time, he lost a lot of the Christian denominations because he has begun
to err against Christians themselves,” Pope Shenouda told the state-run
daily Al-Ahram.

The Vatican said on Tuesday Christian denominations outside Roman
Catholicism were not full true churches of Jesus Christ, drawing the ire
of a number of Protestant groups, who said it would hurt dialogue.

Pope Shenouda attributed the statement to Catholic pride as though “they
were the only true Christians in the world”.

“We're not opposed to Catholics having pride in their church, but that
doesn't mean that every church that doesn't join them isn't a church.”

Analysts see recent moves by the Pope including allowing a wider use of
the Latin Mass and reasserting Catholic primacy over all other world
religions as efforts to re-assert traditional Catholic identity and
revitalise the church.

“I'm under the impression that the Pope of Rome, Benedict, is walking in
one path and the rest of the Catholics are walking on another path on
some issues,” Pope Shenouda said.

He was echoing remarks by Bishop Friedrich Weber of Germany's United
Evangelical Lutheran Church, who said official Vatican teaching did not
reflect the grass roots reality of inter-denominational dialogue in many
communities.

Last year Muslims protested after Pope Benedict used a quote that
associated Islam with violence. He said he had been misunderstood and
later expressed his esteem for Muslims.

Pope Shenouda discounted the possibility of Pope Benedict backing down
or apologising.