In Photos: Egypt's Christians Travel to Annual Celebration of Virgin Mary

The Virgin Mary Monastery complex is home to a new nine-meter-tall bronze statue of the holy mother with open arms.

Christian worshippers and their fellow Muslim pilgrims gather inside the Virgin Mary Monastery, an ancient mountain cave turned church, where they believe the persecuted holy family once took refuge.

The Virgin Mary Monastery’s volunteer-run shops offer low-cost food items and mineral water to this season’s budget-crunched and heat-exhausted visitors

These volunteer butchers serve meat, subsidized by the monastery, to pilgrims amid the nationwide cost-of-living crisis. “Our turnout is very low this year,” their manager says, “due to the doubled and tripled livestock prices.”

Afifi Zikry, a volunteer accountant at the monastery’s slaughterhouse, says, “Our meat is 30 to 40 pounds cheaper than the market prices. He says the monastery, which is subsidizing the meat, "cares deeply for the underprivileged.” 

Shenoda Sideky, a new father from the nearby city of Asyut, says, “We should not only remember Jesus and Mary inside the monastery, but also look for them among the less fortunate.”

Sara, an 8-year-old schoolgirl, sits with her parents and siblings on a long pew inside the Virgin Mary Monastery. She dressed up her Barbie doll in a Mary-inspired costume for the celebrations.

Coptic Bishop Uannas, the head of the Virgin Mary Monastery, blesses believers during a ceremonial procession to the cave church.

Pilgrims recite prayers and wishes before another luminous shrine deep inside the Virgin Mary Monastery, a sacred site of ongoing refuge.

Pilgrims write wishes on small papers and toss them toward a monastery shrine Near Assiut, Egypt, Aug. 15, 2023. The Coptic ritual is a source of solace and relief, especially after repeated currency devaluations and grinding food inflation.