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Nazeer Gayed, now Pope Shenouda, was one of the leaders of the Sunday School Center of Saint Antonius in Shubra, Cairo. It sought to educate teachers and strengthen their personal faith in God. While Iskander focused on the masses, Gayed paid close attention to leadership. Their different approaches to renewal have blended, but not completely.

Iskander realized that the church must be reformed from within. Despite contrary advice from his friends, Iskander became a monk in 1948, assuming the name Father Matta. In time, he initiated far-reaching reforms within Coptic Orthodoxy.

Coptic leaders in those days were preoccupied with maintaining tradition within churches and monasteries. Meanwhile, the number of monks had dwindled dramatically. Those few who remained were poorly educated, a dangerous condition in a church that elects its highest leaders from among the monks.

Matta developed a spirituality based on rigorous study of the church fathers, whose works span the first few centuries of Christianity. Students from the Sunday-school movement admired him. Many joined the monastic life, forming a group of reform monks.

Meanwhile, Gayed became editor in chief of Sunday School magazine, which was critical of Coptic clergy, including Patriarch Yusab II. To bring about reform and change, Gayed said, the next patriarch should come from the Sunday-school movement. He joined Matta's followers in 1954, and Matta became his confessor. Gayed took the name Father Antonius.

After the death of Pope Yusab in 1956, a debate erupted on whether his successor should be a reformer or a traditionalist. Conservative bishops, controlling the Holy Synod, excluded monks from the Monastery of Samuel, the residence of Matta and his reformers, as potential papal candidates. Antonius decided to leave Matta's group shortly afterward. Then the anti-reform bishops created a minimum age requirement, effectively excluding any reformist monk from the patriarchal throne.

Pope Cyrill VI was elected in 1959, after years of debate. This selection was widely seen as a compromise between the two parties. Cyrill was not one of the reform monks, but he was highly esteemed by many of them. During his tenure, Pope Cyrill VI worked for church renewal. Antonius was consecrated a bishop in 1962, and took the new name Shenouda.

In 1969, Matta was asked to restore the ancient Monastery of Makarios, where only six old monks remained. Most of the buildings had collapsed, and the surrounding land lay neglected. Today, 32 years later, the monastery has a flourishing agricultural program, counts more than 100 monks, and has produced hundreds of books on Coptic spirituality.

Focusing attention on pastoral leadership for congregations, Bishop Shenouda reinvigorated Coptic seminary education, starting in the early 1960s. The number of students studying theology increased threefold. In 1971, the church's Holy Synod picked Shenouda and two others as candidates for patriarch. Using lots, the synod asked a young boy to choose one of three names placed on an altar. He chose Shenouda.

As the Coptic pope, Shenouda expanded theological education and training. The statistics show amazing development in church leadership. Only about 500 students graduated from seminary from 1900 to 1961. More than 2,300 graduated from 1961 to 1994. The best of them became priests, monks, and (eventually) bishops.

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December 3 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15