St Catherine’s Monastery, established in the 6th century under the patronage of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, occupies not only a geographically remote corner of the Sinai Peninsula but also a uniquely liminal space between spiritual autonomy and sovereign control. As one of the world’s oldest continuously operating Christian monasteries and a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site, it represents a convergence of religious, political and historical narratives that transcend national boundaries. Today, however, the monastery is emblematic of a deeper tension: the dissonance between Greece’s cultural-religious heritage claims and Egypt’s assertion of national sovereignty.
This paper contends that Greece’s loss of influence over St Catherine’s is the result of strategic neglect, institutional underinvestment, and a failure to recalibrate its Orthodox diplomacy within the geopolitical realities of the post-2011 Middle East. Conversely, Egypt’s consolidation of administrative and symbolic control over the monastery reflects a deliberate policy of heritage nationalization – framed not only as a matter of security, but of postcolonial cultural sovereignty.
The historical autonomy of St Catherine’s was forged through both imperial design and local negotiation. The Ashtiname of Muhammad, a charter granted by the Prophet himself, guaranteed the protection of the monastery under Islamic rule, and successive Islamic regimes honored this exceptionality. The duality of Christian sanctity and Islamic patronage served to shield the site from regional turbulence for over a millennium.
Yet, in the framework of modern state sovereignty, religious autonomy is conditional. Although the monastery continues to operate under the canonical jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, all matters concerning property rights, restoration, foreign funding, and archaeological activity are mediated by the Egyptian state. The ultimate administrative control lies with Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities and the Ministry of Endowments, both of which increasingly treat the monastery as a national asset within Egypt’s cultural economy.
Greece, despite its long-standing ecclesiastical ties to the monastery, lacks any formal legal authority over it. Its leverage, therefore, is limited to cultural diplomacy, ecclesiastical advocacy, and soft power. But in each of these arenas, Athens has underperformed.
While Greece routinely positions itself as a custodian of Orthodox Christianity, its policy approach to St Catherine’s has been sporadic and symbolic rather than sustained and strategic. There is no bilateral treaty or cultural memorandum specifically addressing the monastery’s administration. Despite frequent summits between Greek and Egyptian officials since 2014 – focused heavily on maritime and energy cooperation – the monastery rarely appears in formal communiques.
This omission is not merely a diplomatic oversight; it reflects a conceptual failure to integrate religious heritage into the matrix of foreign policy. Unlike Turkey, which actively uses its Ottoman-Islamic heritage abroad as a tool of influence, Greece has yet to craft a coherent framework for cultural statecraft that includes the protection and promotion of Orthodox sites outside its territory.
Compounding this failure is the Greek ecclesiastical leadership’s insufficient local engagement. The Greek-speaking monastic community at St Catherine’s has remained largely insulated from broader Egyptian Christian circles, including the Coptic Church, thereby missing opportunities for ecumenical and diplomatic solidarity. Moreover, Greek attempts to bypass Egyptian oversight – by channeling foreign donations or restoration efforts independently – have reinforced perceptions of neocolonial overreach.
In contrast, Egypt’s cultural and administrative assertion over the monastery aligns with a broader policy of reclaiming narrative sovereignty over religious and historical sites. Since the El-Sisi administration’s rise to power in 2013, the Egyptian state has prioritized the securitization and nationalization of religious heritage, particularly in peripheral regions such as Sinai.
By integrating St Catherine’s into national tourism strategies, security protocols, and development agendas, Egypt has effectively localized its identity. The appointment of Arabic-speaking staff, the rerouting of restoration through state channels, and the enhanced visibility of the monastery in Egypt’s soft power outreach to European audiences all signal a deliberate cultural realignment.
Far from being an isolated act of assertion, Egypt’s approach is part of a broader ideological project: to define religious pluralism as a national rather than transnational value, and to reframe sacred spaces as vectors of state-led modernization and international prestige.
Amid these shifting dynamics, the European Union’s role remains paradoxically muted. Egypt is one of the largest recipients of EU development assistance and macro-financial support. As part of a broader strategic partnership, the European Union has committed a substantial €7.4 billion financial support package to Egypt, including €1 billion already disbursed and an additional €4 billion approved. The package features macro-financial assistance (MFA) designed to bolster Egypt’s economic stability and advance key structural reforms. Yet the EU has consistently failed to link its financial leverage to robust conditionalities concerning religious freedom and cultural heritage protections.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), though often viewed as reactive rather than preventive, may serve as an indirect forum for contesting violations of religious access, expression and property rights – especially if future tensions over the monastery spill into broader issues of religious discrimination or heritage mismanagement.
Moreover, the EU’s silence on the status of St Catherine’s stands in contrast to its active engagement elsewhere – such as its support for Christian heritage sites in Iraq, Lebanon and Armenia. If the EU aims to act as a normative power in the Mediterranean, its inability to respond to Egypt’s creeping monopolization of St Catherine’s raises critical questions about the coherence of its foreign policy priorities.
Brussels must move beyond developmental diplomacy and begin integrating cultural and religious heritage concerns into its strategic dialogue with Cairo. Otherwise, it risks enabling a model of heritage governance that rewards control over pluralism and undermines the EU’s own stated values.
The case of St Catherine’s illustrates a critical gap in Greece’s foreign policy: the absence of a credible religious or cultural diplomacy framework capable of operating within a multipolar and post-Westphalian context. Hellenic cultural influence, historically built on notions of universalism and spiritual continuity, has failed to adapt to the sovereignty-centered heritage policies of contemporary Arab states.
This is not merely a question of ecclesiastical nostalgia. In regions where historical legacies and soft power still inform strategic alignments – such as the Eastern Mediterranean – cultural neglect becomes geopolitical attrition. The erosion of Greek influence in Sinai parallels similar losses in Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria, where Hellenic religious institutions increasingly find themselves subordinated to national cultural agendas.
Greece did not lose St Catherine’s in a single moment. It lost it incrementally – through underinvestment, strategic incoherence, and an outdated belief that historical affinity substitutes for contemporary influence. Egypt, by contrast, has asserted control through a legalistic narrative, red tape, and an appeal to sovereignty that is redefined in the new Middle East.
If Greece seeks to reclaim relevance, it must move beyond nostalgia and engage in a new kind of ecclesiastical diplomacy: pragmatic, adaptive, and grounded in mutual recognition of sovereign cultural frameworks. Simultaneously, the European Union must reassess its passivity and leverage its financial and diplomatic tools to protect the pluralism it claims to uphold. Otherwise, St Catherine’s will remain not a shared spiritual legacy, but a monument to the quiet retreat of Hellenic and European influence in the very lands where they once flourished most profoundly.
Dr John Sfakianakis is the chief economist of the Gulf Research Center, and a fellow at Chatham House and the University of Cambridge.