Monastery of St. Makarios of Alexandria did not exist at all until 1960. Its monastic life was founded by Father Matta El Meskeen who abandoned Cairo following the orders of the late Pope Kyrillos VI. Matta El Meskeen then chose this area that he knows very well.
With the help of one of the Bedouins, he found the big cave where he established the monastery. He suffered a lot with his monks to establish this monastery and live in it with very few food and transportation.
In May 1969, Pope Cyril ordered them to move to the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great. Among those monks were fathers Cyril, Jacob, Mina, Elisha and John of St. Macarius. Years later, Father Elisha decided to abandon his monastery after he collected a lot of money from his visit to Germany. Then, he used the money collected for the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great to move back to Wadi Rayan. He named it the Monastery of St. Makarios of Alexandria, and seized thousands of acres of land classified as a nature reserve. During the revolution of January 25, he also built a wall around the monastery.
The truth is this monastery only started in 1960. Moreover, it doesn’t belong to the monastery of Saint Macarius the Great.
Father Elisha insists on the presidency of the monastery and creates so many problems for himself and the church as well. In fact, the monastery contains few monks who seek easy life. Those young monks demonstrated expressing their anger away from Christian love and monastic morals.
I can only say that the Coptic Orthodox Church is right concerning this matter.
