France: Catholic priest murdered | tagesschau.de

A Catholic priest was found dead in a small community near the western French city of Nantes. A man who is said to have set fire to the cathedral in Nantes a year ago confessed to the deed.

In France, the alleged arsonist of Nantes Cathedral is under strong suspicion of having killed a Catholic priest. The general secretary and spokesman for the French Bishops’ Conference said the killed priest was Olivier Maire, the provincial of the Montfort missionaries.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told the short message service Twitter that a clergyman had been the victim of a “dramatic murder” in the Vendée department. He pledged “all his support” to the country’s Catholics and announced that he would drive to the scene of the crime.

Alleged arsonist confesses to the act

Darmanin later confirmed that the alleged perpetrator should also have started the fire in Nantes Cathedral a year ago. A man had turned himself in to the police in Mortagne-sur-Sèvre, about 60 kilometers from Nantes, and said he had killed a priest, according to matching media reports from judicial circles.

Accordingly, it was the same man who was arrested in the course of the investigation into the fire in Nantes Cathedral in July 2020. The church was badly damaged at the time.

Police: priests harbored suspects

Shortly thereafter, a then 39-year-old volunteer community servant was arrested for confessing to starting the fire. He was first taken into custody and later released under judicial supervision. The man from Rwanda fled to France a few years ago.

The slain 60-year-old priest had housed him “for several months,” according to police circles. No further information was initially available on the course of events. The dead clergyman was discovered in the village of Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre in the premises of a missionary brotherhood, reported the station Franceinfo.

Crimes against Catholic clergy

The last fatal attack on a Catholic clergyman in France was only a few months ago. Last October, a 22-year-old Tunisian killed three people with a knife in the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice.

In 2019, a 90-year-old priest was beaten and suffocated in the Oise region. The act was linked to a decades-old complaint against the man for “inappropriate behavior towards a minor”.