Scottish Catholic Observer

The attacks came as the Egyptian police and military clamped down on sit-in protests by Muslim Brotherhood supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

One of the buildings attacked by Islamists was a Franciscan school in Beni Suef, a city 71 miles south of Cairo.

Following the attack, three nuns who worked at the school were taken out in front of protestors and treated like ‘prisoners of war’ with two other women sexually assaulted trying to escape the crowd.

School principal Sr Manal was involved in the abuse before being saved by a Muslim woman who worked at the school and whose son-in-law was a policeman.

“We are nuns,” Sr Manal said. “We rely on God and the angels to protect us.”

The attacks on Christian churches and schools throughout Egypt is considered as a threat to Christians seeking fairer rights in Egypt following the 2011 Arab Spring.

Christians in Egypt make up only 10 per cent of the country’s population of 90 million, and suffered discrimination and violence long before the Arab Spring, but this recent violence is seen as responding to Christians’ role in the Morsi coup.

The violence this weekend was condemned by Pope Francis in his Angelus yesterday, where he led prayers for Christians affected by violence in Egypt.

“The word of the Gospel does not authorise the use of force to spread the faith,” the Pope said. “The true strength of the Christian is the power of truth and love, which leads to the renunciation of all violence.

“Faith and violence are incompatible.”

Before the weekend attacks,  a Coptic Catholic bishop who served as a member of the assembly that drafted Egypt’s 2012 constitution said his country will not have a civil war, and foreign powers and the United Nationshould not interfere.

Bishop Youhanna Golta of Alexandria, Egypt, also said people must view Egypt as a whole and not just be concerned about Coptic Christians.