Mt Sinai watch

Daniel 11 ⁴⁵ And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him. Daniel 11

Mt Sinai, often referred to as the holy mountain, is in Egypt between two “seas”, the Gulf of Suez and Gulf of Aqaba

Currently there is a monastery in Egypt on Mt Sinai called Abbey of Saint Catherine. Lately there has been some controversy about the ownership of this area:

NEWS

Coptic Solidarity: Update July 13, 2026: …The report also warns that the implications extend well beyond St. Catherine’s itself. The dismantling of the centuries-old legal order governing one of the world’s oldest continuously functioning Christian institutions would establish a precedent that could one day be invoked elsewhere against other ancient religious institutions—including Islamic holy sites.

The report concludes that the preservation of St. Catherine’s Monastery is no longer solely the concern of its monastic community or of the Greek Orthodox Church. It has become a test of whether governments and international institutions remain willing to defend the legal principles that protect historic religious institutions everywhere.

Cultural Property News: ahramonline Update June 7, 2025: Egyptian press reported today that Pope Tawadros II, the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, and Pope Leo XIV, head of the Vatican, had a telephone conversation on June 6 “praising Egypt’s political leadership” for reaffirming that monks at Saint Catherine’s Monastery would not be removed. In fact, the article restated the same restrictions and assertions that the monastery was Egyptian public property, to which Pope Tawadros II vehemently objects.

Explainer: St. Catherine Monastery’s controversy

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A*G American Greatness The Closure of the World’s Oldest Monastery

In May 2025, a ruling by the Egyptian courts stated that the lands surrounding St. Catherine’s Monastery did not belong to the monks who have inhabited them for fifteen centuries, nor to their abbot, nor even to the wider Coptic Church in Egypt. Instead, the court declared the monastery’s grounds the legal property of the Arab Republic of Egypt, absorbed into the state’s “public domain.”