Paris, 20 October, 2020 / 10:05 am (ACI Africa).
Religious leaders gathered at a memorial to slain French priest Fr. Jacques Hamel Sunday, following the beheading of a Paris school teacher in an Islamist terror attack.
Catholic Archbishop Dominique Lebrun of Rouen was joined by representatives of Muslim, Jewish, and other Christian communities Oct. 18 at the memorial near the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, where Hamel was murdered by Islamists in 2016.
They laid a wreath in honor of Samuel Paty, who was killed Oct. 16 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris. The religious leaders then observed a minute’s silence.
In a statement, members of the interfaith committee of Rouen said they had gathered “to express their shock and utmost condemnation of the murder.”
“God cannot ask to kill,” they said, alluding to reports that the perpetrator, Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, attacked Paty after the teacher showed his class a cartoon depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad.