Egypt buries Coptic Church leader

20 March 2012 Last updated at 18:10 GMT The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says there were "almost hysterical scenes" at the funeral

The funeral of Coptic Pope Shenouda III has taken place in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

St Mark's cathedral was packed with mourners paying their respects to the 88-year-old pope who died on Saturday.

He was the spiritual leader of Egypt's Copts, who make up 10% of the country's population and are the Middle East's largest Christian community.

Pope Shenouda's body was then flown to the Nile Delta northwest of Cairo and buried in a remote desert monastery.

Thousands of people greeted the motorcade carrying his body when it arrived just before sunset, and military police struggled to control the mourners trying to get into the monastery.

The patriarch spent more than three years in exile there in the 1980s when the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat accused him of fomenting sectarian strife.

Two months ago he asked to be interred at St Bishoy monastery on his death - he was laid to rest in a white marble tomb with a cross on top.

The ceiling of the chamber is covered with pictures of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints, and it also has small windows to let in some light.

Copts were given time off work to prepare for the funeral, and a national day of mourning has been declared.

Global tributes Continue reading the main story Jon Leyne BBC News, Cairo

Outside St Mark's Cathedral the monastic bell tolls the parting of Pope Shenouda. A guard of honour greets the long procession of dignitaries.

The chanting of priests is broadcast to the huge crowd gathered to pay their respects echoing round this Cairo neighbourhood. The gates of the cathedral were locked early in the day as the massive church filled up.

Many thousands of Coptic Christians stand in silence outside, some praying some weeping at the loss of a pope who led them through four turbulent decades.

Tens of thousands of people queued to see Pope Shenouda, whose body had been on display in the cathedral since his death.

Dressed in embroidered vestments and a golden mitre and holding a gold-tipped staff, his body was laid in a coffin before being placed on a ceremonial throne.

"The Holy Pope was able to gain the love of even those who held different opinions and I believe this will be a difficult thing to replace," said a mourner named as Samir.

"But God protects the Church and he will find a suitable patriarch."

Thousands of mourners who were unable to get into the cathedral followed the service on a huge television screen outside.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says the massive crowds bear witness to the huge love and respect for Pope Shenouda.

As the white coffin was carried out from the cathedral there were almost hysterical scenes, with some women wailing and fainting.

The Pope was seen as a leader who did his best to protect Coptic Christians at a time when Islamism was on the rise, our correspondent says.

Continue reading the main story Born Nazeer Gayed 3 August 1923 in Asyut, Upper EgyptBecame a monk in 1954, as Father Antonios el-SyrianiEnthroned as pope of Alexandria in 1971, after death of Pope Cyril VIBanished to desert monastery after row with then President Anwar SadatReleased in 1985 by President Hosni MubarakBut his deep conservatism - including his opposition to divorce - was not always popular with younger Christians.

There is no timetable yet for finding a successor, who will be elected by a conclave of senior bishops.

The first challenge for the new leader will be to reassure Copts of their place in a country whose largest political party is now the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, our correspondent adds.

Tributes have come in from around the world, with Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI offering prayers and US President Barack Obama praising Pope Shenouda as an "advocate for tolerance and religious dialogue".

Egypt's military rulers expressed the hope on their Facebook page that his wish of "preserving the unity of Egypt and the unity of its social fabric" would be achieved.

And a senior Muslim cleric, the Grand Imam of the prestigious al-Azhar university Ahmed al-Tayeb, expressed sorrow and said he "greatly remembers his vision towards Jerusalem and its history".

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Church of TED

16 July 2011 Last updated at 08:07 GMT By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, TEDGlobal, Edinburgh A dancing robot took centre stage at TEDGlobal this year There aren't many places where you get to see a dancing robot and a woman dressed in a black suit threaded with mushroom spores on the same stage, but that is just a normal day at TEDGlobal.

Beyond the eclectic nature of its speakers, the conference is unusual in many ways and has become something of a cult for its followers - appropriately known as TEDsters.

There is both a big and little TED. The first is held in the glamorous location of Long Beach, California. The second has been taking place in Edinburgh this week, after several years in Oxford.

Delegates can watch the show in chill-out pods

Delegates love the coolness of the event; to borrow from a well-known beer commercial - if Apple did conferences it would probably be something very like TED.

It is something of an elitist club - attendees pay £5000 for the privilege of watching speakers talk about technology, entertainment and design.

Those three subjects make up the acronym TED but these days the talks are much wider.

Politics, history, economics and ecology were all on agenda in Edinburgh, with China's meteoric rise to power proving a major talking point.

Opera singer Danielle de Niese moved the audience

Nadia Al-Sakkaf, editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times, gave a moving speech about her desire for a democratic Yemen.

Philip Blond, architect of the Big Society idea talked about how society was broken, although there was little insight into how his big idea was going to fix it.

Meanwhile philosopher Alain de Botton talked about the need for religion 2.0 - with one particularly enthusiastic Tedster suggesting later that TED itself could be the new church.

Intermingled with the speakers was dance, opera and music performances.

Social experiment

This mix of intellect and emotion seems to be a defining feature of TED, which also offers its high-powered, wealthy audience a range of social and cultural distractions, including this year a launch party at Edinburgh Castle.

Delegates are invited to pick a badge based on their mood

There is also a sense of being part of a huge social experiment. They are encouraged to network furiously in case "the person that can change your life is sitting next to you".

Where other conferences offer delegates a feedback form, TED invites the audience to select a badge that most reflects their mood. Options include 'My ideas were challenged', "I was inspired and acted on it" and "What am I doing here?".

The badges are housed in plastic tubes and at the end of the week TED will assess which was the most popular. Current winner at the time of writing - "I said what I believe".

TED began life as an elitist club for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs until it was bought by British publisher Chris Anderson in 2001 and turned into a non-profit organisation dedicated to ideas worth spreading.

He angered some TED purists by agreeing to post videos of all the speakers online for free after the conference. It has opened the event out to a much wider audience and has spawned TEDx, localised independent conferences set up by volunteers around the world.

This summer TED is also pondering how it can spread its ideas in schools and an announcement on TED ED is due in the autumn.

Despite the changing nature of the organisation, the conference remains a curiously closed experience. Tweeting is discouraged in the auditorium and there are no question-and-answer sessions to let the audience challenge speakers.

But TEDsters, as befits members of a cult, hold little truck with criticism. They embrace the week-long event as an oasis of intellectual and emotionally stimulation.

Mushroom death Artist Jae Rhim Lee wants people to take a more ecological approach to death

Cutting-edge tech remains at the heart of TED.

The dancing robot did more than just prove that it could move with great elegance. Rezero, as it is known, is part of a family of ballbot robots whose design offers a range of real world applications, from guides around museums to intelligent trolleys in hospitals.

Net activist Rebecca MacKinnon gave a call to arms speech about preserving the internet from censorship, including the self-imposed censorship of corporates operating in China. Meanwhile security expert Mikko Hypponen spoke of the need to embrace rather than arrest hackers.

On the final day, pilot Anna Mracek Dietrich unveiled her flying car - or roadable aircraft as she prefers to call it. The craft, complete with folding wings, could be on the road by the end of this year.

And the mushroom suit? Artist Jae Rhim Lee wants to spread the idea of decompiculture - which encourages people to allow their dead bodies to be eaten by mushrooms as an altogether more organic way of dying.

She has, apparently, already got some volunteers although whether the TEDsters will be putting their bodies forward is doubtful. They seem too keen to embrace life and all it has to offer.

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