A mass will take place in Cairo on Wednesday at the start of celebrations to mark the visit to Egypt by St Francis in 1219 during the Fifth Crusade when he engaged in interfaith dialogue with its sultan, Malek al-Kamil.
The celebrations will last two years and will focus on the meeting in Egypt's northern port city of Damietta between St Francis and Kamil, according to Coptic Church officials.
Ahead of Wednesday's mass, Egypt's tourism minister Yehya Rashed and a high-level delegation will visit the Vatican, where Pope Francis was due to bless for the first time a Coptic icon of the Flight of the Holy Family in Egypt.
Rashed's visit to the Vatican comes amid a government drive to boost the terrorism-hit tourism industry in Egypt, which will become a destination for pilgrimages from 2018.
"The (papal) blessing of the icon is the crowning glory of prodigious efforts made by the president (Abdel Fattah al-Sisi) and the ministry to nurture tourism and to put the Holy Family's Flight to Egypt back on the pilgrim map," Rashed said in a statement.
St Francis accompanied the armies of western Europe to Damietta and tried to stop the Crusaders from attacking the Muslims at the Battle of Damietta, according to contemporary accounts.
During his stay in Egypt, Francis remained with al-Kamil and his Sufi teacher Fakhr ad-din al-Farisi for some three weeks, discussing prayer and the mystical life after an initial attempt to convert each other, the accounts claim.
