Tens of thousands of mourners are gathering Tuesday in front of St Mark's Cathedral in Abbassiya, Cairo, for the funeral of the Coptic Orthodox Church's leader, Pope Shenouda III who died Saturday at the age of 88. The service is due to start at 11am as flocks of Egyptian Christians keep heading to the Cathedral. Not all the mourners, however, will be able to bid farewell and recite prayers from inside the prestigious worship house as only 4,000 invitation holders are allowed to get in.

Hundreds of thousands of mourners are expected to gather on Tuesday in front of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Abbasiya, Cairo for the funeral of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s leader, Pope Shenouda III who died Saturday at the age of 88. The service, which is due to start at 11am, will be prayers rather than a full mass, led by Bishop Bakhomious of Beheira. Bishop Bakhomious is currently heading the church for an interim period of two months, until the General Congregation Council of the Coptic Church nominates a successor.

The death of Pope Shenouda III on Saturday night struck a blow to the Coptic community in Egypt. They lost a spiritual leader and guardian who guided them for 41 years, but his passing has also sparked fears over the fate of the minority group in a country witnessing the hasty ascent of Islamic political groups to power. Hundreds of thousands of mourning Christian Copts poured into the streets surrounding the Abbasseya Cathedral on Saturday night and Sunday, to pay their last respects to Pope Shenouda as his body lies in repose for people to bid him farewell. He died after a long fight with kidney failure at the age of 89.

Church sources said today that some religious leaders have expressed the preference to delay the election of the next patriarch of the Coptic Church beyond the election of a new president for Egypt. This means that the election of the next Coptic Pope would not take place before July, if the new president is sworn into office on 1 July as scheduled.

The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria on Sunday announced that the body of Pope Shenouda III would be buried within the precincts of Egypt’s St Bishoy Monastery, in line with the late pope’s last will and testament. The monastery is situated along the Cairo-Alexandria road in northern Egypt’s Wadi Al-Natroun region. Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, head of Egypt’s ruling military council, announced that the armed forces had assigned a military plane to transport the pope’s body to the monastery from St Mark's Cathedral in Cairo following his funeral on Tuesday.

Thousands of mourning Coptic Orthodox Christians gathered Saturday evening at Abbassiya Cathedral in Cairo. Groups of hundreds of new comers steadily streamed towards the Orthodox cathedral from all directions, as the night progressed. Women dressed in black, young men on motorcycles, families crowded in automobiles or coming out of the nearby underground metro station and senior citizens leaning on canes or supported by grandchildren poured into the church's grounds, hoping to be in the proximity of the body of Pope Shenouda III, who had been pronounced dead at 5pm earlier in the afternoon.

Thousands of grief-stricken mourners flocked to Abbasseya Cathedral on Saturday night to pay their last respects to Coptic Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria. The mourners — traveling from governorates around Egypt and from abroad — gathered en masse waiting to get through the narrow cathedral gates. Many men showed tattoos of crosses on their wrists to be allowed swift entry. Others tried to force a line for women to enter. Amid the chaos, tempers momentarily flared, but were quickly put out.

Pope Benedict XVI released a message saying that the Catholic Church shares the pain of the Copts over Pope Shenouda III’s death on Saturday. Benedict sent a condolence message to Coptic Christians on Sunday following the death of Pope Shenouda at age 89.

"Our fate is in the hands of God. We are praying for things to go in the right direction. Of course with Pope Shenouda we were safe, because he always protected our rights and spoke for our problems. Now we don’t know what the future will bring," said Abnoub, a 28-year-old Coptic Christian.

Egypt’s ruling military council, presidential candidates and religious figures expressed sorrow and offered their respects to Pope Shenouda III, who passed away at the age of 89 on Saturday. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), in a message on its Facebook page, said that it hopes that the Pope’s wishes of “preserving the unity of Egypt and the unity of its social fabric” will be achieved.

Some members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their families announced public support for presidential hopeful Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, a former leading member of the Brotherhood, despite strict orders from the group not to break ranks. The Brotherhood made a public statement on Saturday that members could risk being expelled if they voted for or endorsed a different presidential candidate to the one officially backed by the group.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafi-led Nour Party have rejected that the detained officials of the former regime benefit from the Jama’a al-Islamiya’s proposal to grant amnesty to political prisoners convicted under the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The Maspero Youth Coalition has called for Copts to pray for Pope Shenouda III in the Coptic Cathedral from 5pm to 8pm on Wednesday under the slogan "your people love you." Pope Shenouda's health has been deteriorating recently. He apologised for giving his weekly sermon today, due to his health problems.

The campaign of Islamist presidential hopeful Hazem Abu Ismail denied reports that circulated saying he could gather more than the required 30 signatures to run for president in a statement posted on the campaign’s Facebook page on Tuesday. “The purpose of circulating these reports is to make signatories reluctant to [support] the hopeful,” said the statement.

A number of MPs expressed their rejection of how members of the National Council for Women were appointed, saying it suggests the country never had a revolution. The issue came up during a meeting for the People's Assembly Human Rights Committee on Tuesday to discuss amendments to the personal affairs law.

The Muslim Brotherhood has announced that it has not yet decided on which presidential candidate to support during the elections scheduled for June. Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Brotherhood’s official spokesperson said that any reports circulated in the media about the matter are "completely false."

Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Araby on Monday expressed his regret for the comments of Mahmoud Ghazlan, spokesperson for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, against the United Arab Emirates, which he called "hostile." Ghazlan criticized the Dubai Police for intending to ask Interpol to arrest the head of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was also a member of the Brotherhood, for condemning Emirati authorities for deporting Syrian nationals demonstrating against Bashar al-Assad in violation of UAE laws.

The Wasat Party has decided to form a committee to convince either Mohamed Selim al-Awa or Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh to withdraw their candidacy for president so one would stand for elections while the other supports him. The party announced that it made the decision during a meeting Sunday and that it realizes the coming period will require great effort to achieve national progress.

A Salafi leader has for the first time spoken openly on Monday about a possible deal between the Salafi Nour Party and the military over a particular candidate in the upcoming presidential election. The website of the state-run daily Al-Ahram quoted Salafi Front spokesperson Khaled Saeed as saying the party would not support Salafi presidential hopeful Hazem Abu Ismail, possibly because of an agreement with the military not to support an Islamist for the presidency.

Khaled Saeed, spokesman for the heavy weighted Salafist Front – formed after the January 25 Revolution to call for the adoption of Islamic law in Egypt – on Monday said an agreement had been in place since August for the group to support Hazem Salah Abou-Ismail's presidential bid. The decision was "not because he is a Salafist or has an Islamic orientation, but because we haven't seen another programme like his and his ideas are the closest to our own," he added.

Michael Mounir, Coptic rights activist and head of the liberal Hayat Party, has said that Coptic Christians do not agree on a specific presidential candidate but are united in their opposition to Islamist candidates. "I hope Egyptians choose a president to serve the country and don’t base their choice simply on a candidate's religion," Mounir said in an interview on Dream TV's Good Morning Egypt.