Priest Killed in France, the Assassin Had Set Fire to Nantes Cathedral

"Father Olivier Maire was murdered, a victim of his generosity“. Thus on Twitter the episcopal delegate for information of the diocese of Rennes, Nicolas Guillou, confirms the identity of the priest killed today in Vendée.

Bruno Retailleau, senator of Les Républicains, also published on Twitter the name and a photo of the murdered priest, stating that “Death testifies to the goodness of this priest whom I knew well and whose depth of faith I was able to appreciate.".

A 40-year-old Rwandan, Emmanuel A., is responsible for the murder of a priest in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, in Vendée, already known to the authorities because last year he confessed to being responsible for the fire at the Gothic cathedral in Nantes. On July 26, 2020, eight days after the fire that destroyed the organ of the church of Saints Peter and Paul, shattered the stained glass windows and blackened the interior of the 2019th-century cathedral, the authorities admitted responsibility for the blaze, lighting three fuses. Emmanuel A. had lived in Nantes for many years and was the volunteer responsible for ensuring that everything was in order in the church, “known and appreciated,” the French media wrote at the time. He had asked for refugee status, but “he had mental problems and had tried to regularize his situation on the basis of these problems,” the Nantes prosecutor said at the time. The application had been rejected and since XNUMX he had received an expulsion order, an order that had been suspended after the fire because he was under judicial surveillance.

"Pain and inability to understand in the face of the assassination of Father Olivier Maire, provincial superior of the Monfort missionaries”. Thus Don Hugues de Woillemont, spokesman for the French Episcopal Conference, who on Twitter expressed “communion of prayer and hope with his religious family”.