Prague, July 26 (CTK) – Prague Archbishop Cardinal Dominik Duka, primate of the Czech Catholic Church, has condemned the attack in a church in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray near Rouen in France where two assaulters killed a priest and injured three other people on Tuesday.
French President Francois Hollande said it was an act of terrorism and that its perpetrators were IS followers. IS claimed responsibility for the act later.
“I am praying for the believers from the morning divine service, for their lives and health,” Dukas said on his website.
The Vatican and Pope Francis also condemned the attack, calling it barbarian.
The behaviour of the assaulters from Saint-Etienne du Rouvray is a dangerous precedent, Duka said.
“A church, not to mention a divine service, is not and has never been a place for demonstrations, activisms or any violent enforcement of one’s will. This is a place of a meeting with the Lord and the legacy of our fathers’ faith and a place to celebrate the Eucharist. I condemn the acts of the attackers from Saint-Etienne du Rouvray,” Duka said.
Two assaulters with knives took five people, a priest, two nuns and another two believers, hostage in a church in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray on Tuesday. They killed the priest and seriously wounded a nun. The police shot the terrorists dead.
A state of emergency has been valid in France due to terrorist attacks in the past few months.
The previous one occurred in Nice on the French national holiday, July 14, when a French man of Tunisian origin drove in the crowd with a lorry on a bustling promenade, killing at least 84 and wounding over 200 people.
