(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Nine flights departed Cairo International Airport on Friday carrying 1,233 Egyptian Christians who are heading to Jerusalem for Easter celebrations, an airport source has said.
"Seven Air Sinai flights are heading to Tel Aviv carrying 1,086 Egyptian Christians, while two Royal Jordanian flights carrying 147 others are heading to Amman before continuing to Tel Aviv," the source, requesting anonymity, told The Anadolu Agency.
Safwat Wasfi, a supervisor at one of the tour companies organizing the pilgrimages, told AA that the trip would last for seven days during which participants would visit Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, the Jordan River, the port city of Jaffa and a number of other holy places.
"Most travellers will not perform religious rituals at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in accordance with instructions from Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church," Wasfi said.
"A special hall is being prepared in the Church of the Nativity in which the rituals can be performed," he added.
Most of the Egyptian pilgrims this year, he said, were over 50 years old.
Last week, Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church reiterated its longstanding position prohibiting Coptic Christians from celebrating Easter in Jerusalem "so long as the city remains under Israeli occupation."
Egypt's Evangelical and Catholic churches, for their part, did not voice any objections to the trip, considering it a matter of "personal choice."
Egyptian Christians who wish to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem are required to obtain Israeli visas, which the Orthodox Coptic Church considerers a form of "normalization" with the self-proclaimed Jewish state.
The number of Egyptian Christians who visited Jerusalem for Easter in 2014 stood at 3,500 € three times more than the previous year, according to a security source at the Cairo airport.
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