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Up a cobblestone driveway in the heart of Rome, across from the soaring Tuscan columns of St. Peter’s Square, juts a narrow building watched over by a heavy-lidded statue of Saint Augustine. The Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum was founded in 1970, in the shadow of the Vatican, to renew the teachings of Church fathers. On most days, its glinting marble halls echo with the footsteps of theology students immersing themselves in doctrine, canon law and sacred Scripture.

On September 18, however, the building played host to a secular gathering that some would soon see as profane: the International Congress of Coptic Studies, a quadrennial academic conference that this year drew more than 300 scholaars from 27 countries.