Servant of God Jacques Hamel

Jacques Hamel was a French Catholic priest who served in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. On 26 July 2016, Hamel was murdered during the 2016 Normandy church attack by two Muslim men pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant while Hamel celebrated Mass in his church. The circumstances of his death have led him to be called a martyr by Christians, including Pope Francis, non-Christians, and the press. Calls to declare him a saint started soon after his death. The canonization cause was officially opened at diocesan level in April 2017, after Pope Francis had waived the otherwise mandatory five-year waiting period for the opening of such causes. Hamel was born on 30 November 1930 in Darnétal, France. At the age of six he became a choirboy in St. Paul's Church in Rouen and at 14 he entered the minor seminary. He served in the military for 18 months in Algeria. He did not wish to be an officer as he did not want to issue orders to other men to kill. Hamel was ordained as a priest on 30 June 1958. He served as an assistant priest at the St. Antoine church in Le Petit-Quevilly from 1958, an assistant priest at the Notre-Dame de Lourdes church in Sotteville-lès-Rouen from 1967, a parish priest in Saint-Pierre-lès-Elbeuf from 1975, and a parish priest in Cléon from 1988. He joined the church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in 2000. He officially retired in 2005 at the age of 75, but continued serving as the parish's assistant priest. With local imam Mohammed Karabila, the president of Normandy's regional council of Muslims, Hamel worked since early 2015 on an interfaith committee. After Hamel's death, Karabila described him as his friend with whom he had discussed religion and also as someone who gave his life for others. Hamel died when his throat was slit by two Muslim men, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, both aged nineteen, who both pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.