On August 11 1966 this small but special article was published by a newspaper in Curacao.
It says that the Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople has permitted the emperor Haile Selassie from Ehtiopia to found a Coptic monastery on Mount Athos. In the same year some Coptic monks would enable the establishment on Athos. Since the middle ages there have been no monks of monophysite religions on Athos.
Maybe the two met at the World Congress on Evangelism in West Berlin in 1966, but obviously the attemps to found a Coptic monastery on Athos, failed.
But I do remember that Coptic monks were very interested in Mount Athos: during my visit to the monasteries in Wadi Natrun in 1989 I told the monks that I had been on Mount Athos twice. They wanted to know all about it and I had to tell them how arrange a visit to Athos.
Two years before this article was written in 1966, Haile Selassie received in 1959 the “the Breast Badge in honour of St. Vladimir” from Patriarch Alexis I in Russia (see here).
By the way: Patriarch Athenagoras used to be a deacon in Iviron monastery, here a picture from 1918:
Below the same person, but now in 1963, when he presides the celebration of the 1000-years of Mount Athos, as the late Ecumenical Patriarch.
Wim, 9/4
Reblogged this on orthodoxunitydotnet and commented:
My experience also has been that Copts are fascinated by the Holy Mountain. They already have a deep reverence for monasticism and are very in tune with the monastic communities around them. Mount Athos is a special place because it is an area of land dedicated entirely to God and His Holy Mother. Perhaps in our lifetime we will see, God-willing, a Coptic monastery, in full-communion with us, on Mount Athos.