“You have seen the strong man judged in a bed in Egypt,” he told the two dozen immigrant members of his congregation who braved the city’s checkpoints to make it to Anglican Mass on Friday. “And so it works that the weak can overthrow the strong,” he added. “This is what is happening in our Middle East.”
In a city of tapped phone lines and ubiquitous government informers, the weekly Mass at the Church of Christ the King is a rare sanctuary: a place to speak freely with a group of Tripoli residents about the anxious, ever-shifting mood of the city.
“When NATO bombs at night, I hear my neighbors clap and cheer ”˜bravo,’ and in the morning they are with the rebels,” a leading parishioner said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. “People are very, very down, and they are depending entirely on NATO.”
Oh dear. Hamdy was in danger before, now he may be in even greater danger. Pray for him and for his congregation!