Nantes Cathedral arson suspect confesses to the murder of priest

Rwandan immigrant being investigated over blaze has admitted killing the cleric who found him a home

A RWANDAN immigrant under investigation for a 2020 arson attack in Nantes Cathedral yesterday handed himself in to authorities and confessed to murdering a priest that helped him find a home.

Police found the body of the priest Olivier Maire in the bedroom of his home in the Saint-laurent-sur-sevre, Vendee region early yesterday morning.

Prosecutors have opened a murder investigation but the case has piled pressure on the government of Emmanuel Macron ahead of the 2022 presidential election, in which immigration is set to be a key issue.

Yannick Le Goater, vice prosecutor in the western county of La-roche-suryon, said Mr Maire, 60, found a home for Emmanuel Abayisenga in the religious community he himself lived in while the latter was under investigation over the Nantes fire.

Mr Le Goater added that Mr Abayisenga had been placed in a hospital psychiatric unit and that an evaluation was under way to verify whether he could be placed in police custody.

Mr Abayisenga, a Catholic, had been volunteering in the local diocese at the time of the Nantes arson, which destroyed the cathedral’s centuries-old organ but left the main structure unscathed following a swift firefighting operation.

Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, yesterday travelled to the scene of the crime amid growing questions over how Mr Abayisenga had been allowed to remain in the country after the Nantes fire. He had confessed to the crime but was yet to make a court appearance.

After spending several months in prison, Mr Abayisenga was released on bail May 31. He had also spent a week at a psychiatric hospital in late July before moving back in with the diocese.

“An attack on a priest is an attack on the soul of France,” Mr Darmanin said during a press conference yesterday.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, accused the government of being weak on immigration.

“In France, one can be an illegal immigrant, set fire to the Nantes cathedral, never be deported, and then commit a second offence by murdering a priest,” Ms Le Pen tweeted. “What is happening in our country is unprecedentedly serious: it is the complete failure of the state and Gerald Darmanin.”

Mr Darmanin said Ms Le Pen was exploiting the crime, and claimed it was the ongoing investigation into the Nantes fire that prevented any deportation.

Immigration authorities had ordered Mr Abayisenga to leave in 2019, before the arson attack.

“What indignity!” Mr Darmanin tweeted. “Rather than expressing her compassion for the Catholics who provided shelter to this murderer, Madame Le Pen is politicising the situation without knowing the facts: this foreigner could not be deported despite his deportation order as long as his judicial control was not lifted.”

While under judicial control, Mr Abayisenga was ordered to report to French authorities twice a month.

Jordan Bardella, a National Rally spokesman, demanded the interior minister “explain without delay how an illegal immigrant targeted by an order to leave the country was able to set fire to the Nantes Cathedral and roam around Vendee a few months later to murder a priest”.

Senator Bruno Retailleau, who represents the Vendee region, said he was shocked that Mr Abayisenga had turned on his benefactor.

“Deeply shocked by the terrible murder of a priest who had taken his murderer into his care,” Mr Retailleau said on Twitter.

“What was this man still doing in France?” the senator asked.

France is on high alert over the risk of attacks in churches after a radical Islamist from Tunisia killed three people in a church in Nice in late October. However sources close to the investigation emphasised there appeared to be no link to terror in this killing.

Mr Macron “expressed all his sympathy” to his religious community of Montfortains, while prime minister Jean Castex expressed his “deep dismay” and his “deep compassion”, their offices said.

The Nantes blaze came 15 months after the devastating 2019 fire at the Notre-dame cathedral in Paris.

‘What is happening in our country is serious: it is the complete failure of the state and Gerald Darmanin’