ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) - A slight, elderly man with a beard keeps watch all day outside a church at the 4th century Virgin Mary Monastery in southern Egypt and only two people are entrusted with the keys to the altar area.
It's simply impossible, the monastery's brothers say, that a fellow monk could have walked in with a woman - much less a stream of women over 12 years - to have sex by the altar in one of Egypt's most revered Christian sites.
``There is no place or opportunity for him to have done this here. This is a well-guarded place and there are always people around you wherever you are,'' said Taraous al-Mahraki, a monk at the monastery outside Assiut, 180 miles south of Cairo.
Still, police are investigating a newspaper's report that a monk named Adel Saadallah Gabriel - since defrocked - lured women into sex with promises of healing their infertility or other ailments, then blackmailed them out of gold jewelry and money with videotapes of the encounters.
Gabriel's alleged dalliances are all the gossip among Egyptians. The article about him in a racy weekly set off riots by Coptic Christians in Assiut and Cairo. And the paper's editor faces trial Sunday, charged with encouraging contempt of a religious sect and publishing immoral photos - 14 blurred images purportedly showing Gabriel in compromising positions with women.
The fuss says much about the religious climate in Egypt. Copts, who make up slightly more than 10 percent of the population in largely Muslim Egypt, regularly complain about discrimination, and violence flares from time to time between Muslims and Christians.
To many Copts, Al-Nabaa's publication of the pictures was an attempt to make Christians look bad and incite Muslims against them. The story raised anger particularly because the monastery is on a site where Copts believe Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus visited on their flight into Egypt.
The newspaper editor, Mamdouh Mahran, who is free on $2,500 bail, refused a request for an interview, saying he would speak only at his trial. He could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted, and the Coptic church says it will sue him for libel.
The monastery disputes that the man in the photos - taken from videos - is even the ex-monk. It's impossible to tell where the pictures were taken.
Gabriel himself is in jail while police investigate. He was a monk at the monastery from 1984 until 1996. He was defrocked after leaving the monastery for weeks at a time, said Father Bakhomious, deputy head of the monastery.
``A monk's life is dedicated to the monastery. He was unwilling to conform by that rule. We gave him several chances, but he always went back to his old ways,'' he said.
Bakhomious won't discuss details of Gabriel's ``old ways.'' But he is clear in his disapproval of the ex-monk: ``The behavior of this devil doesn't mirror the behavior of all monks or all Copts.''
A dirt road leads up to the two-acre monastery compound of stone buildings surrounded by a wall. The foyer is a gathering site for peasants, who share tea and conversation inside.
``Many Muslims come here to receive the blessings of the church before planting their crops every year. They regard it as good luck,'' Bakhomious said.
The monastery is just outside Assiut, a city of 2.9 million people with slightly more Muslims than Christians. It was a hotbed for Islamic militant attacks, mainly on police and Copts, in the early 1990s, but fears the scandal would re-ignite violence haven't materialized.
In Assiut's coffee shops, both Christians and Muslims speculate on what the outcome of the case may be.
``What is disturbing is that pictures like this- let alone pictures of a monk - would be published,'' said Medhat Harby, a Christian engineer. ``We are used to this paper publishing stories about prostitution and sex. But even so, they have never published such inflammatory pictures for any other story.''