French police have tried to cover up a blunder that enabled two Islamists to murder Fr Jacques Hamel, according to news reports.
Prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry after allegations made by the investigative news site Médiapart. The site alleged that an intelligence officer with the Paris police had alerted superiors to the threat posed by Adel Kermiche, one of the two terrorists, just five days before the attack. The warning was ignored and it is alleged that the officer was ordered to change the date of the notes and even erase his browsing history to protect the careers of the superiors involved.
Kermiche had been discovered on the encrypted messaging site Telegram urging followers to “go into a church and take out everyone”. He said that with a knife one could “cut off two or three heads” and “cause carnage”.
A police report said the comments “clearly pointed towards a jihadist profile turned in an explicit manner towards the Islamic State organisation”.
The officer suggested that the General Directorate of Internal Security, the French equivalent of MI5, be told of the threat.
A spokesman for Paris police said that an agent had produced a note on Kermiche before the attack but that the note did not suggest that a terrorist attack was imminent.
Islamists Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean burst into a church in Saint-Etienne-de-Rouvray, a small town in Normandy, in July 2016. They slit Fr Hamel’s throat in front of four parishioners and were shot dead by police as they left the church.
Fr Hamel’s Cause was officially opened less than a year later after Pope Francis waived the traditional waiting period of five years after a candidate’s death. At a Mass in memory of Fr Hamel, Francis said that the 85-year-old priest had accepted his martyrdom. In his final moments, the Pope said, he “did not lose the lucidity to accuse and clearly say the name of his murderer. He clearly said, ‘Be gone, Satan.’ ”
New Paris archbishop installed
The new Archbishop of Paris was installed in Notre-Dame Cathedral on Sunday.
Archbishop Michel Aupetit, 66, urged the faithful “to learn to recognise the divine dignity in the weakest, the poorest, the most fragile”, reported La Croix. About 30 bishops attended the Mass. Archbishop Aupetit practised medicine from 1979 to 1990. He was ordained as a priest for Paris archdiocese in 1995, aged 44.
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