An Egyptian court on Saturday recommended the death penalty for two monks after they were convicted of murdering a bishop at a monastery last year, Reuters reported.

The judge referred the case of Wael Saad and Ramon Rasmi Mansour to the grand mufti, Egypt’s top Muslim religious authority, who must review all death sentences and usually approves them. Mansour wept after the ruling, a witness said.

Saad, known by his monastic name Isaiah al-Makari and Mansour, known as Faltaous al-Makari, were convicted over the July killing of Bishop Epiphanius, 64, the abbot of Saint Macarius Monastery, some 110 km (70 miles) northwest of Cairo.

“The defendants were led by the devil to the path of evil and vice, and committing the greatest of the greatest sins and the greatest of crimes which the heavenly religions forbade,” Judge Gamal Toson of the Damanhour court said in his ruling.

After review by Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam, the defendants will be sentenced on April 24. They will remain in custody.