Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

 

This article states that there are many Orthodox and Evangelical priests who are accused of crimes, some of them have already been sentenced and others are still waiting for verdicts. Strangely, these priests are not accused because of preaching, as is usually the case, but rather they are accused of moral crimes such as forgery and plundering people’s money. One instance of this is Father Mattā’us Wahbah who was sentenced to five years for his forgery of official documents of a convert girl to Christianity, after baptizing and helping her to marry to a Christian man. The Church did not accept such a verdict because the priest had no relation to the girl’s conversion, which took place in 2002, and the forgery of her ID card, which took place in 2004, while the marriage happened in 2007. Another example of such a case is the verdict against two priests in Assiut, Father Banūp and Father Peter, who were sentenced to one year because they broke into a physician’s apartment and seized it by force. The article mentions other minor accusations against other Orthodox and Evangelical priests.