Murder of French priest opens a new frontier for Catholic church

Killing of Jacques Hamel by men claiming to be Isis militants is a particular challenge to Pope Francis and other church leaders

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Tuesday 26 July 2016 12.23 EDT

Every year, the Vatican’s Agenzia Fides, which tracks the work of Catholic missionaries around the world, releases a grim list of how many of its own have been killed while serving the church. Last year, 13 priests were among the dead, most of whom were killed in the course of violent robberies, and nearly 400 church-affiliated workers have been murdered since 2000.

But even for a church that has grown accustomed to a certain amount of violence in its bloody history, including priests murdered by government-sanctioned death squads, the brutal murder of an elderly French priest, Jacques Hamel, at the hands of two men claiming to be Islamic State militants represents a particular challenge to Pope Francis and other church leaders.

The apparently targeted killing in Normandy will be seen as reinforcing the pontiff’s deep concern about Christian persecution. Last year he called the murder of Christians in the Middle East by Isis a “form of genocide” and obliquely condemned terrorists who use religion to “profane the name of God and use it to justify their unprecedented violence”. It could also make it more difficult for Francis to counter conservative voices within the church who have been critical of his insistence that Islam is a peaceful religion.

Vatican watchers noted on Tuesday that in the first remarks about the attack issued by Francis’s spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, the violence committed in France was denounced as “absurd”. It was similar language the church used to describe the massacre in Nice – “senseless” – and the murder of four Catholic nuns in Yemen by Isis, which the pope called “diabolical”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/26/jacques-hamel-killing-challenge-pope-francis-catholic-church