The scene of the terrible murder of Fr Jacques Hamel, at daily Mass in a small town, recalls the roots of Christianity and is a reminder of how so many people experience the Church
An unnoticed and somewhat a forlorn little spot in northern France became the centre of huge attention a month ago. On 26 July, in the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray just south of Rouen, the frail, elderly priest, Fr Jacques Hamel, was horrifically murdered before his tiny congregation by two men pledging allegiance to Islamic State.
The killing, as Fr Hamel celebrated Mass, sent shivers around the world and the Church in Europe in particular. That this community was until then so obscure, unnoticed and so vulnerable, brought to mind the phrase in Deuteronomy, chapter seven: “It was not because you were the greatest … but the fewest that I set my heart upon you”. It is a mirror, perhaps, of a church holding together in a secular, and until then a largely indifferent, France. Little communities such that at Fr Hamel’s daily Mass are hidden and unimportant in the view of many, even though there are countless numbers of them across Europe.
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