Historical Background

---

The Bishopric of Public, Ecumenical and Social Services (BLESS) is a general bishopric of the Coptic Orthodox Church.      
 BLESS was established in 1962 to be the social, diaconal and development arm of the Church. 

BLESS was established on September 30th, 1962 to provide a wide range of diaconal services to the poorest communities in Egypt. Within the Coptic Orthodox Church, BLESS is viewed as a major social arm that provides its services to all the dioceses.

At its establishment, BLESS was assigned to conduct three major roles:
(1)Community development
(2) Charity and financial support and
(3)Ecumenical relations. 

Bishop Samuel was the first Bishop Ordained for BLESS.  He paid a great deal of attention to these three areas of service. Unfortunately,
His Grace was assassinated and the country went through a period of instability. During the interim,
Metropolitan Athanasious was assigned to lead the organization and land it in a safe haven.         

On June 2nd, 1985 Metropolitan Serapion was assigned to lead the organization and he built a lot of systems, recruited professional staff and equally performed in the arenas of ecumenical, social and community development services. Early 1996, Bishop Youannes took over and he emphasized on charity work and created the new approach of Comprehensive Integrated Development (CID). In July 2015, Bishop Yolios was assigned to lead BLESS. He gave special attention to community development work. He started updating BLESS bylaws, statues and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). He formed an advisory board for BLESS and started a new effort to reposition BLESS as a faith based organization serving Egyptian needy communities.  In an endeavor to enhance proficiency, BLESS has recruited a team of outstanding professionals (advisory committee) to provide programmatic, management and administrative advice. In addition, an experienced Executive Director was assigned to lead the staff and team-up with HG Bishop Yolios.  The committee is mandated to advise BLESS’ leadership on programmatic, management or administrative matters. The volunteer committee includes top notch Egyptian experts in the areas of program development, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, human resources and financial management.