Another French horror

Lyon priest shot

A Greek Orthodox priest in Lyon, France, was critically injured when he was shot as he was closing his church Saturday afternoon.

The priest, a Greek citizen identified as Nikolas Kakavelakis, 45, a father of two, was shot twice in the abdomen.

Authorities locked down a large swath of the residential neighborhood surrounding the church in a massive manhunt for the shooter, who was reportedly armed with a sawedoff shotgun. One unarmed man was detained by cops. Investigators were trying to determine his identity.

French anti-terrorist authorities were following the case, but not investigating the shooting as a terrorist incident.

The Lyon prosecutor opened an investigation for attempted murder.

“No theory is favored, no theory is ruled out,” Lyon Mayor Gregory Doucet told reporters at the scene. “We don’t know at this stage the motive for this attack.”

Antoine Callot, the pastor at another Greek Orthodox church in Lyon, said that the Greek Orthodox community in Lyon has not received any threats, but he immediately asked police for security protection at his church.

“We are anxious and anguished. It’s really horrible,” he said. “Now we need to hide and be careful.”

This attack comes as the nation is on high alert after a series of recent terrorist attacks, including a knife attack in Nice on Thursday that saw three killed: a woman who was nearly decapitated and a man beheaded inside a church, and a third woman stabbed several times before she was able to run away. She died of her injuries later.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said the suspect in the Nice attack, a 20year-old Tunisian man, was not on the radar of intelligence agencies as a potential threat. He was shot 14 times by police and is seriously wounded.

On Oct. 16, a teacher was beheaded outside of Paris. In both of those attacks, the assailants shouted “God is great!” in Arabic.

France has the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe, more than 5 million in a nation of 67 million, but the country’s efforts to integrate Muslim immigrants have failed.