The campaign proved successful as the Coptic Church maintained control of the land under the condition that a non-profit building be built on it in the following fifteen years.

However, on 11 December 2016, during the Muslim festival of Mawlid, the chapel near the cathedral was the venue of an Islamic terrorist attack that killed at least 25 people, most of them women and children.

[11] Before the completion of the cathedral, the Roman Catholic pontiff of the time, Pope Paul VI, returned part of St. Mark's relics, which were stolen from Egypt in the year 828 to Venice, Italy.

These relics were taken to the newly constructed Cathedral, where they were placed in a specially-built shrine brightly decorated with Coptic icons, where they have remained until the present time.

[citation needed] The inauguration of the new Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral took place on 25 June 1968[12] in a ceremony hosted by Pope Cyril VI and attended by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, among other foreign clergy members from other churches.