Henri Ayrout..a pioneer in the development of Upper Egypt

Father Dr. Henry Ayrout, the founder of the Association of Upper Egypt, was born on May 20, 1907. He is the son of a wealthy family that came from Syria to Egypt in 1818 and is the son of the famous Egyptian architect Habib Ayrout, who participated in planning and building the Heliopolis suburb in Cairo. Henry Habib Ayrout entered the Jesuit order in 1926, he was nineteen years old at the time. Then he traveled to France to study there, and in the fall of 1937, as he was a student at the Jesuit seminary in Lyon France, he went outside the institute to be trained in practical life before he was ordained a priest, and Henry Ayrout chooses to spend his civil training in his native Egypt.

And when he came to Egypt to spend his civil training there, he heard a tumult among the Jesuit fathers about the closure of the Upper Egypt schools they ran for lack of financial resources: they were 40 free primary rural schools, which the Jesuit fathers had established in the past in the villages of Upper Egypt. Henry Ayrout visited Upper Egypt and saw these schools, and this was the first time that he set foot on the land of Upper Egypt, and he was a guest at the Seminary in Tahta, Sohag. In the shadows of palms, he sat with the students of the Institute in Tahta and chatted with them about the living conditions of these poor villages of Upper Egypt. Possessing such knowledge is necessary for the progress of this countryside socially and spiritually. Henry Ayrout wished that, after his ordination as a priest, he would serve in Upper Egypt.

ِAttracted to studying sociology

After his return to France, he turned his attention to the social study of the Egyptian peasant and the discovery of the heart of the Egyptian countryside. He decided to look by research and study to the level from which the urban population knows only a small fraction. He carried out this careful investigation, not as a tourist or amateur does, but rather worked on it as a sociologist does. This scientific effort resulted in unique anthropological research on the habits and character of the Egyptian farmer, with which he obtained a doctorate from the University of Lyon in France in 1938, and his introduction was written by Professor “ Andre Alex, President of the University of Lyon at the time, and then the letter was published in the name of "The Peasants" in a book in French first, and then it was translated into several languages ​​​​in the world. Two editions were published in Arabic, one of which was translated by Dr. Muhammad Ghallab, Professor of Philosophy at Al-Azhar University in 1942.
Ayrout started from his saying, “The knowledge that does not turn into love is false knowledge.. If we love children, we release their minds to knowledge, their bodies to health, and their souls to love..” Including authorizing the formation of the Catholic Association for the Schools of Upper Egypt, and officials welcomed this request. The Association of Free Schools in the Villages of Upper Egypt was established in the late 1940’s by Father Dr. Henry Ayrout. There, Father Ayrout was interested in spreading science and knowledge, and gathered around him an army of volunteers, participants and donors, men and women, to take care of the affairs of the schools, and ensure the continuity of the connection between cities and villages until, within ten years, the number of free schools reached one hundred and twenty schools, comprising nearly ten thousand students. Sixty dispensaries for health care for the people of the remote villages of Upper Egypt, where Ayrout saved what he could of the people of the countryside from their lives, which were prey to poverty and prey to disease and ignorance, and ensured the young children of farmers. His letter was a call for social justice, as Ayrout fell in love with the level, and sought to build a school in every village, discovering that it is deprived of social, health and cultural services. The schools that he established and nurtured, and a revolution against disease. How many patients have healed and seen in the clinics he founded, and Ayrout had a huge fortune estimated at about 150 thousand pounds (a very huge number at the time) he donated all of it to the association, and his philosophy was “There is no human in the world.” He cannot serve his human friend.” On April 9, 1964, Father Henry Ayrout met President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Egyptian president expressed his great admiration for Father Henry Ayrout’s activity in Upper Egypt and told him, “You made the revolution before me.”

Father Ayrout was distinguished by his broad-mindedness and intellectual space. I made him a link between the followers of various sects and religions, and he had solid friendships with everyone, and Ayrout said in that: "I will go towards others who are really others, to try to build ties with them..It is an adventure as long as we must mutual rapprochement." The Brethren of Purity, which supports Christian-Muslim dialogue; He had founded it with the late father George Shehata Kanawati, the late Sheikh Muhammad Youssef Moussa, and the late Sheikh Muhammad Badran, and that was during the year 1944; Which later turned into the Religious Fraternity Society, located in the Church of Our Lady of Peace in Garden City.
Ayrout played an unforgettable role in helping refugees after the setback of June 1967, after the Vatican delegated him to be responsible for sending relief to refugees, and from here Caritas Egypt was established, of which Father Ayrout is considered the first to move it, and he distributed the aid as he was the vice-president of Caritas. In that event, his willingness to sacrifice his life wherever he went, to the refugee camps from Palestine, the Canal region and the Sinai, in addition to his venerable national role when he represented Egypt in the committee that went to His Holiness the Pope of Rome to explain to His Holiness the Arab cause and the rights of the Palestinian people, was a reason for the success of the mission. .
Father Ayrout, who devoted his life in jihad and struggle for the sake of principles and ideals, lived his life in Egypt, and was convinced that it is not permissible for a person to live in an environment without interacting with it, feeling its feelings, feeling its problems, and giving everything he has in order to raise the standard of his life in its various forms, and he witnessed to him All of his contemporaries on his self-denial and sacrifice of everything precious and precious for the sake of making others happy, and he always said: “We work first and then we talk, we talked a lot without doing anything”, even in the last six years of his life when he was appointed director of the Holy Family School (1962- 1968), the same school that a student entered and worked in as a teacher in his youth. Ayrout dedicated Friday of every week to bring out students from the sons of Zamalek and Garden City in work camps in the neighborhoods of Bulaq, Sharabeya and Sayeda Zainab, to eradicate illiteracy, raise awareness for the cleanliness of neighborhoods and identify problems She suffers from it in order to return with reports on the society's problems, and then Father Ayrout tries to solve it.
In his last days, his works expanded to the jungles of Africa and the countries of the source of the Nile with the aim of developing African villages. From August 1, 1968 to March 1969, Ayrout worked in a tour that lasted more than six months between the jungles and villages of Africa, during which he cared about the conditions of the poor in Central and Southern Africa to present them A valuable study, and his experience in this field was published in a French-language book entitled (Liaisons Africanines) published by his family after his death in 1975. The book includes a summary and a report on his visit to this country.
After his visits to Africa, Ayrout traveled to New York to give lectures on this African tour at Columbia University, but on Maundy Thursday, a heart attack surprised him there, and then the next day, on Good Friday, which corresponds to April 10, 1969, the news agencies spread the news of the death of a great man. Father Dr. Henry Ayrout, his body came to Egypt and was buried in the cemetery of the Jesuits in Mataria, Cairo. In 1969, after the death of Father Ayrout, President Abdel Nasser honored him and awarded him the first-class medal of honor, “The Order of Merit.” This necklace is considered the most important medal granted to Egyptians, and it came in honor of the life and work of Henry Ayrout and was handed over to one of his sisters. The Minister of Social Affairs and the Minister of Health, the Jesuits, and members of the Society.

This year, we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Upper Egypt Association at the hands of its founder, father, teacher and inspirer Henry Ayrout, and we say it with confidence, “Ayrout will remain alive among us” with his message and his heart, and we follow his path, and his approach we develop, and his dream is growing, and we work and we will work in development Upper Egypt.

Sources: A special issue issued by the Upper Egypt Society in memory of Father Dr. Henry Ayrout. It contains some of what was said by his contemporaries in newspapers, magazines and events after his passing.