In 1968, when Egypt was experiencing something of a political, social and economic crisis, the image of the Virgin Mary was seen above the dome of a Coptic Christian church in the Cairo suburb of Zeitun.

Mary's image was seen first in April 1968, a month after workers had gone on unprecedented strike in another Cairo suburb, by two Muslim watchmen at a garage across the road from the church. The apparitions recurred for five months, for hours on end, and more than a million and a half people claim to have seen Mary during this time. There was no verbal message received, but many Egyptians interpreted the apparitions as a message about Egyptian unity and peace, and as testimony to the power of the spiritual realm. 

Again, in December 2009, a Muslim neighbour of a Coptic Church in Giza, Egypt's third largest city, claimed to have seen a light over the Church from the vantage point of the coffee shop over the road. Over the following days, 200,000 people, Christian and Muslim, shared his observation-and took it as a sign of difficult times to come, when unity would be a challenge to the Egyptian people.