The newspaper said it decided on the ban after this month’s truck attack on a Nice fireworks display and also to the memory of the Rev. Jacques Hamel, the 85-year-old priest who was slain Tuesday in a hostage-taking in a church near Rouen.
Advertisement
The Vatican said in a statement: “We are particularly struck because this awful violence has occurred in a church – a sacred place where we pronounce God’s love – with the barbaric murder of a priest and worshippers affected”.
French President Francois Hollande said two hostage takers who killed a priest in a church in Normandy, northern France, were terrorists who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
“May the Lord inspire everyone to thoughts of reconciliation and fraternity in this new test”, read the telegram, signed by Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin. With the young people at WYD, we pray as we prayed at the tomb of Father Popiulusko in Warsaw, assassinated during the communist regime.
He said he was travelling back to his diocese “which is very much in shock”.
French prime minister Manuel Valls decried the “horror” of the “barbaric attack”, writing on Twitter: “The whole of France and all Catholics are wounded. We will stand together”.
The incident had caused the Holy See “immense pain and worry”, Lombardi added.
Advertisement
The director of Le Monde, Jerome Fenoglio, said in an editorial that his newspaper would stop publishing photographs of attackers in a bid to prevent the “possible posthumous glorifying effects” and called for news media to exercise more responsibility.
