The small Catholic community in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray is learning to live again, after the brutal murder by jihadists of their priest during Mass in July

Five months after two young jihadists murdered 85-year-old Fr Jacques Hamel as he came to the end of celebrating Mass, the parishioners of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray seek above all to find serenity again. The church where Fr Hamel was killed is in a suburb of Rouen in Normandy, and is – by a twist of fate – dedicated to the first Christian martyr, St Stephen.

 “The people in the parish want to go back to business as usual, to being an ordinary parish preparing for Christmas just as they have always done,” explains Fr Philippe Maheut, who is the vicar-general of the Rouen archdiocese. “But at the same time, they realise that since the martyrdom of Fr Jacques, this period of Advent, this time of expectation before the birth of Christ, can never be the same again.”

At the beginning of October, the Archbishop of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, at the “reparation and re-opening Mass” at the church where the killing took place, announced that its doors would be a second Holy Door during the Year of Mercy in his diocese. A small space for remembrance was set up at one end of the nave of the church. On the wall hangs a painting of Jacques Hamel made a few days after his death by a Muslim artist from Djibouti living in Tours. On the Feast of Christ the King, the vicar general returned to Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray to close the Holy Door again, as was done in Catholic churches throughout the world.