Thousands of mourners packed Cairo's main cathedral for the funeral of Pope Shenouda III, who spent his final years trying to comfort a Coptic Orthodox community worried about the rise of political Islam in Egypt.
Local clerics, visiting clergymen and dignitaries packed St Mark's Cathedral as deacons chanted somber hymns and bearded, black-clad priests and monks recited prayers.
Pope Shenouda, who died on Saturday aged 88, promoted religious harmony, winning respect among the Muslim majority, but his last years witnessed a growth in sectarian tension that worsened with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak last year.
Religious leaders from across the world, including a delegation of senior Catholics from the Vatican, joined thousands of Copts in the Orthodox Cathedral.
A uniformed delegation from Egypt's ruling military council and several candidates for the upcoming presidential elections attended the funeral.
Prayers were led by Bishop Bakhomious, head of a church district in the Nile Delta north of Cairo, who will hold the post of pope for two months until a new leader is elected.
Pope Shenouda's body was driven away to a military air base and then flown to the Wadi el Natrun desert monastery northwest of Cairo, where he had spent several years of prayer, contemplation and abstinence and had asked to be buried.
Police struggled to keep away crowds wanting to touch his coffin as it was carried by weeping priests and mourners to a small chamber in one of the monastery's halls where the coffin was rested and covered with roses.
