Ex-monk executed for abbot’s killing

Egyptian authorities on Sunday executed a defrocked monk convicted of killing an abbot in a desert monastery north of Cairo, officials said. The 2018 killing of Bishop Epiphanius, an abbot at St. Macarius Monastery, shocked Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world and the one that introduced monasticism to the faith. The monastery was built in the fourth century. Two defrocked monks, identified as Isaiah and Faltaous, were convicted of killing Epiphanius and sentenced to death by a criminal court in April 2019. The Court of Cassation, the country’s highest criminal court, last year upheld the death sentence against Isaiah, while Faltaous received a life sentence in a retrial.