Pope Tawadros denied statements that were attributed to him yesterday that “the nomination of Field Marshall al- Sīsī is a general duty”. He denied making any statements to media in the past  two weeks. Al- Watan, a Kuwaiti newspaper has published statements attributed to Pope Tawadros claiming that he stated that the Coptic Orthodox church told all Western delegations that visited the Church after the “coup of  July 3^rd” that the “Arab Spring was not a spring but was a deliberately planned ‘Arab winter’ which was brought by evil hands to our Arab region in order to fragment its states. He is said to have ended the discussion by stating that the nomination of al- Sīsī is a national duty (Girgis Fikrī, al- Dustūr, March 24). Read original text in Arabic.