About fifty people, religious leaders, elected officials and anonymous, gathered Tuesday morning in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime) for a ceremony of tribute to Father Jacques Hamel, six years after his assassination.
The prefect Pierre-André Durand, the president of the department Bertrand Bellanger (LREM), the mayor of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray Joachim Moyse (PCF), on the arm of one of Father Hamel’s sisters, Roseline, and his predecessor Hubert Wulfranc (PCF), took part in a march to the Saint-Étienne church, where a mass was later celebrated before a republican ceremony.
many parishioners
“We enter into prayer where Jacques fell, victim of the madness of men,” said the Archbishop of Rouen Dominique Lebrun, opening the mass in the church where Father Jacques Hamel, 85, has had his throat cut on July 26, 2016, at the end of a mass in front of three nuns and a couple of parishioners.
Another octogenarian parishioner was also seriously injured in this small church in the suburbs of Rouen, as the country was hit by a series of jihadist attacks.
The two 19-year-old assassins, Adel Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Petitjean, who claimed to be from the Islamic State (IS) group, were killed by the police as they left the church.