![]() ![]() But though the case was dropped last February, the boy was taken to an orphanage. The father signed a paper stating he found the child “on the street,” likely to shield the priest’s involvement. The prosecution determined there was no blood relation, but also no ill will. The niece reported the couple to the police, who investigated. They gave him a Christian-signifying first name, honoring the prior Coptic Orthodox pope, and per Egyptian naming custom the four-generation quadrilateral was completed with the names of the doting father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.Īll was idyllic, until a jealous niece realized the impact on her inheritance.Įgypt’s Islamic-based law, seeking to preserve lineage, prohibits taking another’s child as one’s own. They took him into their home, obtained a birth certificate as if he was their own, and raised him with love and devotion. Likely left by an unwed mother, the child was found by a Coptic priest who presented him to the couple, infertile for 29 years. ![]() The boy’s family name and location have been kept anonymous as a cautionary measure, as reported by the Coptic publication Watani. “There is no possibility it will happen as known in the Western world.” “Adoption is not legal in Egypt,” said Nermien Riad, executive director of Coptic Orphans. In between lies the care of a priest, the devastation of a Christian family, and a sectarian bureaucracy undergoing partial reform. ![]() Today, renamed Yusuf, the boy is found in a state-run orphanage. Four years ago, Shenouda was an infant found at the door of a Coptic church. ![]()
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