The See Of Saint Mark

The Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria leads the Coptic Orthodox Church, the largest Christian body in Egypt and one of the oldest organized churches in the world. Tradition holds that Mark the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Mark, founded the church at Alexandria around 42 CE and served as its first bishop, making the see one of the earliest to claim direct apostolic foundation alongside Rome, Antioch and Jerusalem. Alexandria became a major center of early Christian theology and scholarship, home to figures such as Origen and Athanasius, whose defense of the doctrine that Christ is fully divine against Arian teaching shaped the Nicene Creed adopted in 325 CE.

The Coptic Church separated from the wider body of Chalcedonian Christianity, which includes both the later Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, after rejecting the christological formula adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE; Coptic and other Oriental Orthodox churches hold a distinct, non-Chalcedonian formula regarding the union of Christ's divine and human natures. Following the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 CE, the Coptic Church continued as a minority Christian community within a Muslim-majority Egypt, a position it has occupied for nearly fourteen centuries.