A Little Child Shall Lead Them

I learned a very poetic fact about the Coptic Church the other day. The way they elect their Pope (which for the Copts is an honorific title for the Patriarch of Alexandria) is lovely: after the old Pope dies, the Church instigates a remarkably democratic process that involves the nomination of candidates (monks at least forty years old, who have at least fifteen years of monastic experience) by at least six bishops or at least twelve members of the General Lay Council of the Church. All the candidates are voted on by an electoral college, convened for the purpose in St. Mark's Cathedral in Cairo; the college consists of bishops, monks, priests, and laypeople. The three men who receive the most votes have their names written down on slips of paper, which are then placed in a box on the altar of the Cathedral. Here's the impressive part: a blind-folded five-year-old child, selected from the congregation, is then led to the altar, and takes a name from the box. The man who is picked in this way becomes the new Papa of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Whimsical? Sure. Faith-filled? Indeed. Endearing? Definitely.