Six years after the tragedy, a discreet tribute to Father Jacques Hamel

About fifty people, religious leaders, elected officials and anonymous, gathered Tuesday morning in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime) for a tribute ceremony, six years after the assassination of Father Jacques Hamel.

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.

"We enter into prayer where Jacques fell, victim of the madness of men", declared the Archbishop of Rouen Dominique Lebrun, at the opening of the mass in the church where Father Jacques Hamel, 85, was slaughtered 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, when 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.

The trial of the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray attack opened on February 14 before the special assize court in Paris. , with three members of the assailants' entourage in the dock and a major absentee, the alleged instigator Rachid Kassim.

It ended on March 9 with the last words of the defendants, marked by the repeated "pardon" of two of them. They were sentenced to between eight and thirteen years in prison.

The Editorial Board (with AFP)

Image Credit: Shutterstock / AM113