France aims to ease religious fears

French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday sought to head off religious tensions and defuse criticism over security failings after jihadists killed an elderly Catholic priest in his church.

Mr Hollande met with top religious leaders as a violence-weary France mourned Tuesday’s attack, which came less than two weeks after the Bastille Day truck massacre that killed 84 people in the southern city of Nice.

France’s large Catholic community was in shock after two men stormed into a church in the northern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during morning mass and slit the 86-year-old priest’s throat at the altar. Another man was left seriously injured in the attack.

One of the attackers was identified as French jihadist Adel Kermiche, 19, who was awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag despite calls from the prosecutor for him not to be released.

“We are stunned, because we did not know it was dangerous to be a priest these days in France,” said Pierre Amar, a priest from Versailles near Paris.

Residents of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray were struggling to come to terms with the bloodshed in their small town, so far from France’s tourist hubs. They made their way to a makeshift memorial to lay flowers, candles and messages of peace — a ritual that has become chillingly familiar from Brussels and Paris to Nice and Munich, all cities that have been struck by attackers inspired by the Islamic State group.

Kermiche and his accomplice entered the centuries-old stone church of Saint Etienne, taking hostage the priest, Jacques Hamel, three nuns and two worshippers. One nun fled and alerted police.

The two jihadists were gunned down by the police after leaving the church, marching three hostages in front of them, shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).

Prime Minister Manuel Valls has warned that the goal of the attack, claimed by ISIS jihadists, was to “set the French people against each other, attack religion in order to start a war of religions”.

In an editorial, Le Monde newspaper recalled a key strategy of ISIS, to eradicate the so-called “grey zone” in which Muslims live peacefully alongside other religions, making it so uncomfortable for them to do so that they are forced to join ranks with the jihadists.

“France comes under attack because it is made up of one of the biggest Muslim communities in Europe. The jihadists’ aim is to provoke violent revenge attacks that will create a religious war in our country,” wrote the daily.

Dalil Boubakeur, the head of France’s Muslim community, voiced his “deep grief” at the attack which he described as a “blasphemous sacrilege which goes against all the teachings of our religion”.