France’s religious leaders united after church attack

France’s main religious leaders have sent a message of unity and solidarity following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande a day after two extremists attacked a Catholic church and slit the throat of an elderly priest.

Hollande was presiding over a defence council and cabinet meeting yesterday after speaking with Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish leaders.

On Tuesday, the attackers took hostages at the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in the northwest region of Normandy, during morning Mass. After the priest was slain, both attackers, one a local man, were killed by police outside the church.

Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, called on Catholics to “overcome hatred that comes in their heart” and not to “enter the game” of the Islamic State group that “wants to set children of the same family upon each other.”

The rector of the main Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, said France’s Muslims must push for better training of Muslim clerics and urged that reforming French Muslim institutions be put on the agenda, but without elaborating.

The French prosecutor identified one of the attackers as Adel Ker miche, a 19-year-old who grew up in the town and tried to travel to Syria twice last year using family members’ identity documents. He was detained outside France, sent home, handed preliminary terrorism charges and wore a tracking bracelet.

The identity of the second attacker has not been made public. Police combing the area after the attack detained a 16 year-old whom prosecutor Francois Molins said was the younger brother of a young man who travelled to the Syria-Iraq zone of the Islamic State group — carrying the ID of Ker miche.