Incorporated in 1975 with only 3 families at the time, St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church is the second Coptic Orthodox church that was established in the State of Pennsylvania. It is located in the village of Silver Spring, Pennsylvania, a small, unincorporated town that has a relatively large proportion of Christian Orthodox Copts.

After a certain period of time, the small congregation of St. Mary’s Church, with much help from the late Fouad Gad Youssef, acquired and founded the current building on Marietta Ave in 1980 with only five families at the time. The current building of St. Mary’s Church of Lancaster, as it is often known, was consecrated by a Coptic Orthodox Bishop in September 1982.

The Church was deeply blessed in 1989 by the visit of the leader of the Coptic Church at that time, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of all Africa on the Holy See of St. Mark the Apostle, on his second pastoral visit to North America. This was the same year when His Holiness visited every Coptic parish in the US and Canada.

St. Mary’s Church, which is located in Eastern Pennsylvania that is near the large Coptic population in New Jersey, was also visited by many other Bishops of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

St. Mary Church of Lancaster has grown exponentially since 2010 in recent years and reached its peak of over 280 families in 2016 serving congregants from Lancaster, Columbia, York, and Reading. Due to the small size of the current building and the long driving distances to many other families who live in the Central Pennsylvania region, a number of families decided to start other parishes elsewhere to find a place of worship closer to their homes. Currently, St. Mary Coptic Church of Lancaster is serving about 170 families.