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GV EXT Church and people in street
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SV Priests enter Church
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CV Candles ZOOM OUT TO Priests singing (3 shots)
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SV Priests and small children go forward for selection ceremony
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SV Congregation listening
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SV Priest holds up casket, goes forward
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SV Man holding child
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SV Priest shakes casket and then opening it (3 shots)
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SV Child selects scroll from casket
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SV Priest holding up selected scroll, congregation applauding
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Initials BB/1750 CM/AS/BB/1803



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Bishop Shenouda, Professor of Theology at the Orthodox Clerical College in Cairo, was on Sunday chosen 117th Pope of the Coptic Orthodox church in succession to Pope Kyrillos VI, who died last March.

In a procedure used only once before, in the election of his predecessor, Bishop Shenouda was chosen from three other candidates in the Old Cathedral of St. Marks in Cairo. After a Special Mass, a small boy chose a scroll with his name on it from three others in a silver casket. The Copts believe the small boy's hand is guided in the selection by God.

The other candidates were Anba Samuel, head of Public Services at the Patriarchate, and Father Timothaous, representative of the egyptian Coptic Church in Kuwait.

There are nineteen million members of the Coptic Church in Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian Ambassador was present at the ceremony. There are smaller communities in North America, Paraguay, Brazil, Great Britain, West Germany, Australia, and Canada.

SYNOPSIS: A new Patriarch of Alexandria, the Near East and all Africa, the new Coptic Pope, was chosen on Sunday at a special Mass in the old Cathedral of St. Marks, in Cairo. He is the Bishop of Religious Education at the Cairo College of Theology, Bishop Shenouda, but neither he nor his two rivals in the selection procedure was present at the ceremony. It has been performed only once before, in the election of Pope Kyrillos, who died last march, and was devised to avoid pressure being brought for one or other favourite. The ceremony began with the election narrowed down to three candidates, Bishops Samuel, Shenouda and Timothaous, in that the order of preference of the voters. As the ceremony unfolded, several small boys form the congregation came forward to play their part in choosing the new Pope. The Acting Patriarch, not himself a candidate in the election, chose one of them.

Earlier, the names of the three candidates had been inscribed on scrolls, which were then placed in a ribbon-wrapped silver box.

The chosen child, six year-old Ayanan Kamal, had to complete the ceremony by choosing a scroll from the silver box. The name of the 117th Coptic Pope could then be read to the congregation.

There are nineteen million members of the Coptic Church in Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian Ambassador was present at the ceremony. There are smaller communities in North America, Paraguay, Brazil, Great Britain, West Germany, Australia and Canada.