Stéphanos II Ghattas

Stéphanos II Ghattas (16 January 1920 – 20 January 2009) was an Egyptian Catholic prelate who served as the Coptic Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria from 1986 to 2006. He was a member of the Congregation of the Mission and was made a cardinal in 2001. His cause for beatification will be initiated by Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak as soon as possible.

Biography Ghattas was born Andraos Ghattas in the village of Cheikh Zein-el-Dine in the Girga Governorate (now part of the Sohag Governorate), Egypt. Feeling called to serve as a priest, as a teenager he entered the minor seminary of the Coptic Church in Cairo, then did studies at a Jesuit secondary school in the city. He then went to Rome, where he studied at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, earning doctorates in both theology and philosophy. He was ordained there on 25 March 1944. He then returned to Egypt where he taught at Coptic seminaries in the country, first at Tahta, then at Tanta.

In 1952 Ghattas entered the Congregation of the Mission, doing his year of novitiate in France. He then served in the Lebanon for six years, after which he was sent to Alexandria, where he was the Superior of the Vincentians in Egypt.

Ghattas died in Cairo, where he had retired, on 20 January 2009, four days after his 89th birthday, and was buried in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Egypt in Cairo.