MUSLIMS have attended Catholic Masses in churches and cathedrals across France in a gesture of solidarity after the brutal killing of an 85-year-old French priest in Normandy. She shook hands with the Muslims, along with the other attendees after the service.
Advertisement
“We are very moved by the presence of our Muslim friends and I believe it is a courageous act that they did by coming to us”, Rouen’s archbishop Dominique Lebrun said following the service, as the Associated Press reported. In the French city of Nice, the city’s top Imam Otman Aissaoui led a delegation of Muslims to a Catholic mass.
Imams representing their Muslim communities also took part in mass in many Italian cities and towns including Rome’s Santa Maria in Trastevere and Milan’s Santa Maria in Caravaggio.
“It’s an occasion to show (Muslims) that we do not confuse Islam with Islamism, Muslim with jihadist”, said Reverend Jean Rouet.
“Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person, ” the pope told reporters late Sunday as he returned to the Vatican from a five-day visit in Poland.
“If I have to talk about Islamic violence I have to talk about Christian violence”.
A catholic monk welcomes Muslim worshippers in the Saint-Pierre-de-l Ariane church, prior to a mass on July 31, 2016, in Nice, southeastern France.
The French Muslim Council, the CFCM, is also working to improve the training of imams in France so that they have a better knowledge of the country’s secular history and the institutions of the Republic, Kbebich said.
Some sat in the front row, across from the altar where Father Jacques Hamel died.
Giving her name only as Sadia, she added softly: “What happened is beyond comprehension”.
A Muslim woman who came to mass with her children said: “This was basically a message of unity, aside from peace, it was really about unity”. The men are both being held in custody in relation to the investigation into the attack on Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen last Tuesday.
Father Hubert Renard told the congregation: “We are not alone; our Muslim brothers are here too”.
The French will be frightened by the reality that a person is not safe even while at Mass in a village church on a Tuesday morning.
On Sunday, France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls, called for a new “pact”.
Police were still trying to piece together links to the two 19-year-olds who carried out the attack – Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean – both of whom were on the radar of intelligence services after attempts to go to Syria.
Now the Paris prosecutor’s office says his cousin, identified as Farid K, aged 30, has been placed in preventive detention.
Advertisement
They were shot dead by police as they exited the building using nuns as human shields.
