“Dear friends, I would never have believed that I should announce this terrible news to you”
: it is with these words that Father Loïc Gicquel des Touches, parish priest of Notre-Dame d'Alençon, announced on the Facebook page of diocese the accidental death of Father Mehdi Riffi, 38, found on August 31 in the cellar of the presbytery of Alençon (Orne). The lifeless body of the young priest, whose parish priest underlines
“the stainless dynamism and the thirst to announce the One who made his heart vibrate, Jesus Christ”
, was discovered in a cellar where he had been carrying out work since Sunday evening.
"In the very confined atmosphere of this small area, he died from intoxication due to the generator"
, explains Father Gicquel des Touches.
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Wanted since Sunday evening, his body was discovered on Tuesday evening.
"It's coming out of the police station I had a hunch, and I went back into the cellar, the door was then locked, and I discovered the body"
,
says La Croix
on Gicquel father Keys.
“It is a huge shock that we undergo in the parish, on the pole, for our diocese and that of Calvados where Mehdi had many friends; let us be strong each other by supporting each other with friendship and prayer around our brother Mehdi. Thank you also for praying for his family, terribly affected by this tragedy,
”wrote the parish priest on the Facebook page of the missionary pole of the diocese.
The announcement of this accidental death is all the more brutal for the diocese as Father Riffi was ordained a priest quite recently, on June 28, 2020 at the cathedral of Sées (Orne), after his diaconal ordination in 2019 at the parish of 'Alencon. He had grown up in Bayeux (Calvados), then studied at the private high school Don-Bosco in Giel (Orne). First entering the seminary in 2003, he had worked for six years as a cabinetmaker, then as an educator, before returning to his first priestly vocation.
"Our prayers accompany the parishes of Alençon"
, reacted the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) on its Facebook account on Wednesday.
“Thank you to all of you for your messages of support and sympathy;
we are all in shock at this brutal disappearance
,
”
we could read in a new post from the diocese on Facebook this Thursday morning.
The burial of Father Mehdi Riffi will take place on September 6 at 2:30 p.m., at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Alençon, in the presence of Mgr Jacques Habert, bishop of Bayeux-Lisieux, former bishop of the diocese of Séez, and close to Father Riffi .
