In a knife attack on a church in Nice, southern France, a priest was seriously injured by an apparently mentally disturbed man. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced Sunday that the priest’s life was not in danger. A nun was also injured. According to police, the attack took place during early morning mass at the Saint-Pierre-d’Arène church in the center of town, not far from the beach promenade. The aggressor was arrested.
As Mayor Christian Estrosi announced, he has already managed to talk to the priest and the wounded nun in the intensive care unit. Despite the dramatic incident, the priest is in good shape. The author, who had no criminal record and came from Fréjus in southern France, stabbed him several times with a three-inch-long knife. Municipal police and national police invaded the church to subdue the attacker. Psychological help was organized for many of the believers who were shocked after the attack.
The mayor of the department of Alpes-Maritimes, Bernard Gonzalez, said that the attacker has already received psychiatric treatment, including at a relevant clinic. The man was not registered as a criminal or a radicalized person. Authorities therefore did not initially assume that the perpetrator had an extremist background.
Also in Nice, a year and a half ago, a Tunisian attacker fatally wounded three people, including a sexton, in a knife attack at the Notre-Dame church in the city center. The act was classified as Islamic terrorism.
The most shocking attack on a church in France took place on July 26, 2016 in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen. During the morning mass, two Islamist-motivated attackers initially took six people hostage. Then they murdered Father Jacques Hamel (85) and seriously injured a parishioner. A nun managed to escape and sound the alarm. Both attackers were shot dead by the police. In March, a Paris court sentenced three of the attackers’ aides to long prison terms.