"Christians must not become a symbol to be cut down".
The words of the spokesperson for the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF), after the attack in the Notre-Dame-de-Nice basilica, are not trivial.
In recent years, churches have been regularly targeted.
“It's a moment of pain in a time of confusion.
Terrorism and violence can never be accepted ”, condemned the Vatican for its part.
"We are moved, very touched and in a kind of astonishment in front of this kind of unspeakable act", confided the father Hugues de Woillemont, spokesperson of the CEF, estimating that the place of the attack, inside the basilica, "signed things".
A place of worship attacked within it, as during the assassination of Father Hamel.
In 2016, this priest was killed in the middle of the morning mass, in his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
Two recent lawsuits in connection with church attacks
More recently, two trials have reminded us that places of worship were recurring targets.
That, still in progress, of the author of the failed attack on a church in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne), Sid-Ahmed Ghlam.
On Sunday April 19, 2015, this 24-year-old computer science student planned to lead an assault on the faithful gathered at mass time.
In the parking lot where he was equipping himself, he then crossed paths with a young fitness teacher, Aurélie Châtelain, 32, mother of a 5-year-old child, found dead, shot dead on the passenger seat of his car.
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On October 14, Farid Ikken, a 43-year-old Algerian, tried for the attack on a police officer with a hammer in front of Notre-Dame in 2017, was sentenced on Wednesday to twenty-eight years of criminal imprisonment by the Court of 'special meeting in Paris.
On June 6, on the forecourt of Notre-Dame, the assailant jumped on three policemen, hitting one of them with a hammer, shouting "It's for Syria!"
The policeman, slightly injured in the head, and one of his colleagues opened fire and wounded Farid Ikken in the chest, before arresting him.
A year earlier, near the same Notre-Dame de Paris struck this Thursday, young radicalized women had tried to detonate a car bomb with explosives.
In Nice, the churches closed "until further notice"
A few days before All Saints' Day, a Catholic holiday, cemeteries and places of worship will be particularly protected.
In Nice, all churches are closed “until further notice” and under police protection.
In all the churches of France, the death knell has sounded in homage to the three victims of the attack this Thursday at 3 p.m., a symbolic hour for Christians because it would be that of the death of Christ.
The bishop of Nice, Mgr André Marceau, called for the “spirit of forgiveness” to prevail after the attack.
"Only a few weeks after the devastating passage of the storm Alex, my emotion can only be strong after this new tragedy which mourns our diocese", reacted the bishop in a press release.
Diocesan delegate of Nice for interreligious dialogue, Father Philippe Asso immediately received calls from the Jewish community and from the two people in charge of the mosque of Muslims in the city center, the Chechen-born Imam Ramzam Magamadov and Abdelkader Sadouni.
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"The risk is calling into question the basis of interreligious dialogue and it will be a question of reacting in the most appropriate way to make it move even further", insisted the canon.
"My sadness is infinite as a human in front of what other beings, called human beings, can commit", he added, while calling for "that the spirit of forgiveness of Christ prevails in the face of these barbaric acts ”.