Anniversary of the 2016 ISIS Murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel in France - President Macron Offers Tribute - 2 Days of Ceremonies
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On July 26, 2016, Father Jacques Hamel, age 85, was murdered in the Church of Saint-Étienne in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime) while celebrating Mass . The attack was claimed by the Islamic State. Ten years after this tragedy, France, particularly the French Catholic Church, held two days of commemoration on Saturday, July 25 and Sunday, July 26, 2026.
During two days of commemoration, faithful, residents, religious leaders, politicians and elected officials gathered to honor the memory of this priest whose disappearance profoundly marked France and far beyond. The speeches emphasized the message of peace, fraternity, and interreligious dialogue that his assassination paradoxically strengthened. Since 2016, Father Jacques Hamel has become a symbol of resistance to hatred and fidelity to Gospel values. The ceremonies began with moments of reflection, prayer, and testimonies, recalling the simplicity, kindness, and pastoral commitment of Father Jacques Hamel. A solemn mass brought together many participants from Normandy and across France, a sign that his memory extends far beyond the borders of his parish. These two days of tribute illustrated the deep affection that Father Jacques Hamel still inspires. They also demonstrated the desire to pass on his legacy to younger generations, so that his message of peace continues to inspire those who reject violence and choose dialogue.
Following this tragedy, the priest's sister, Roseline Hamel, and the mother of one of the young assailants, Nassera Kermiche, met and forged a deep bond, which she recounts in her book, "Sisters in Sorrow." It offers the accounts of two collateral victims of the attack against Father Jacques Hamel on July 26, 2016. The two women took part in the memorial activities.
The president of France, Emmanuel Macron wrote this tribute:We do not forget Father Jacques Hamel. Ten years ago today, he was cowardly murdered by two Islamist terrorists, targeted because he embodied the refusal of hatred, fraternity, and hope. To his loved ones, to his parishioners and all the residents of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, to the Catholics of France, I extend the Nation’s fraternal and steadfast salute. His memory compels us. It compels us to relentlessly defend the freedom of conscience that the Republic guarantees and protects. In the face of Islamist terrorism, France remains united. Faithful to what defines her. Resolute in yielding nothing to those who seek to divide us.
Activities held on Saturday, July 25th
- 10am–12pm: Round table discussion “Muslims and Catholics: educating young people to encounter the other”, at the Parish House of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray
- A continuous welcome is available in Saint-Étienne church, with a guestbook available for use.
- 4–6 p.m.: Time for remembrance reserved for people directly involved in the events of July 26, 2016
- 7 p.m.: Memorial vigil "Jacques Hamel in word and deed", with Philippe Tailleux and Father Jacques Simon, at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Rouen
Activities held on Sunday, July 26
- 8:45 a.m.: Welcome at the presbytery of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, screening of a video about Father Hamel
- 9:30 a.m.: Silent march to Saint-Étienne Church, retracing the priest 's last route.
- 9:45/10:00 am: Inauguration of the "Jacques-Hamel Square" by Joachim Moyse, Mayor of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray
- 11 a.m.: Mass presided over by Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, President of the Conference of Bishops of France , and homily delivered by Archbishop Dominique Lebrun of Rouen
- 12pm: Official speeches (mayor, archbishop , member of parliament, prefect)
- 1 p.m.: Social gathering
An interreligious dialogue that continues each year through the Father Jacques Hamel Prize, created in 2017 by the Federation of Catholic Media, which recognizes journalistic work promoting peace and interreligious dialogue . The weekend of July 25 and 26 is part of a broader period of tributes celebrated across France during the summer of 2026, notably supported by the National Service for Relations with Muslims of the Conference of Bishops of France .
The Prime Minister of France attended the ceremonies and gave a speech. The PM, Sébastien Lecornu's speech was delivered by Mr. Jean-Benoit Albertini, Prefect of the Normandy Region
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Ten years ago.
Two terrorists entered a small church in Normandy to
force an 85-year-old priest to his knees and kill him during Mass.
At the foot of his altar,
In the midst of his parishioners.
Terrorism has this implacable quality: it places death at the center of everything.
And the two terrorists succeeded in killing Father Jacques Hamel.
In the most infamous, the most barbaric way imaginable.
By slitting his throat.
But the two assassins never managed to force Father Jacques Hamel to his knees.
At 85, this old man struggled, he endured the blows, he
looked evil in the eye, but he never bent his knees.
Because women and men of faith—whatever their religion—kneel only before the God in whom they believe.
The two terrorists wanted to kill a man, but also to desecrate a faith, humiliate our country, and provoke a war among the French.
But neither Father Hamel, nor the entire Saint-Étienne community, nor the French nation allowed them to fully achieve their goal.
Father Jacques Hamel stood tall in his suffering.
Because he was an upright man. A discreet priest.
Who had served his priesthood for 58 years, among the faithful of Normandy, delivering his homily every Sunday, to offer messages of peace and love to those who listened.
He had the gift of speaking simply to explain the mystery of his faith.
He listened.
He accompanied. He helped others stand tall.
A few weeks before his death, in a message to his parishioners, he urged them to care for the world and make it “warmer, more humane, more fraternal.”
These simple words became his legacy. So did his dignity in the face of horror.
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is precisely the fraternity he invoked in his sermons that has been strengthened by the news of his death.
For Christians, this word has a profound spiritual meaning.
It is also a republican value. Because in our Republic, every citizen is in solidarity with others—regardless of their beliefs, faith, or origins.
Fraternity means knowing how to name evil, looking it in the face, and fighting it, without ever succumbing to vengeance or division. Fraternity is not a weakness.
It is neither the erasure of wrongdoing nor the forgetting of victims.
It does not preclude justice, firmness, or the use of force when the protection of the innocent demands it.
It consists of refusing to let the crime committed against us determine what we will become.
It prevents hatred from passing from one heart to another, from one family to another, from one generation to the next.
On July 26, 2016, republican fraternity triumphed over barbarity, division, and the thirst for revenge.
That very evening, all the residents of Saint-Étienne, believers and secularists alike, spontaneously gathered on the church steps.
This fraternity is an old legacy that refers as much to
the history of our nation as to that of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray:
a land of struggle for workers' rights, and a welcoming land for
entire generations of workers from all
backgrounds.
Here, everyone knows that great achievements are the result of
the coming together of the greatest number.
Everyone knows that in times of hardship, solidarity is essential.
That is what the Republic is all about.
And it is also the freedom to believe.
To not be persecuted for one's faith.
And also not to be forced to have one.
Ladies and gentlemen,
This fraternity, exemplified by the life of Father Hamel, is rooted in a
longer history.
Twenty years before his assassination, seven monks were kidnapped and then
murdered in Tibhirine, Algeria. They had chosen to remain among a Muslim population
with whom they had shared joys, anxieties, and hardships.
They knew the danger. Yet they had refused to abandon those
who had become their neighbors and friends.
In his famous will, Brother Christian de Chergé had
considered the possibility of being killed by a terrorist. He refused in advance to allow the Algerian people and Islam to be indiscriminately
accused of the crime that might befall him.
The circumstances are not the same. But I believe there is,
between Tibhirine and Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a shared moral victory.
The murderers wanted their victims to learn to hate before
they died.
They refused.
They wanted their crime to condemn an entire people or an entire religion.
They refused.
The Catholic community of France had this courage through the words of its representatives – and in particular those of Archbishop
Lebrun of Rouen. You, in turn, refused to hate.
For that is what fraternity is.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In our country, as in the rest of the world, terrorism seeks to sever the bonds patiently built between people.
These bonds have survived them.
This chain of loyalty and courage also leads us to the
Christians of the East.
From Mosul to Qaraqosh, in the Nineveh Plain, some of the oldest Christian communities have been driven from their
homes. Women and men have been abducted, persecuted,
or killed because they were Christians.
France maintains a long-standing bond with them. This bond creates a
responsibility: to defend everywhere freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, and the right of every community to live on the land where its history was written.
But terrorism does not strike just one faith.
In Toulouse and Montauban, it murdered French soldiers because
several were Muslim, before chasing Jewish children and a
teacher in their schoolyard because they were Jewish.
At the Hyper Cacher supermarket, it killed women and men because they
were Jewish.
Elsewhere in the world, he massacres Muslims in their mosques, in markets, or in schools, because they reject his fanaticism.
Let us never forget that the vast majority of victims of jihadist terrorism worldwide are themselves Muslim.
The same hatred targets Jews because they are Jewish.
Christians because they are Christians.
Muslims because their faith refuses to be disfigured by an ideology of death.
It also targets teachers, journalists, police officers, soldiers, and all those who embody a freedom it cannot tolerate.
Ladies and gentlemen, terrorism changes its target, but its goal remains the same: to divide us.
Our response must therefore be just as clear: to protect everyone and leave no one alone in the face of hatred.
Fraternity does not disarm the State. It strengthens it.
The Republic must protect everyone.
It must prevent attacks, prosecute their perpetrators, try their accomplices, and neutralize those who are planning new crimes.
The Islamist terrorist threat has not disappeared. It is transforming, reorganizing itself, and continuing to fuel consciences.
We will continue to fight it relentlessly, through the actions of our intelligence services, our police officers, our gendarmes, our magistrates, and our military.
This fight began in 2015 at the behest of President François Hollande, with an unprecedented mobilization of our forces.
Since 2015, 60 French soldiers have fallen in the fight against terrorism.
I salute their memory and their sacrifice.
Ladies and gentlemen, here in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, you did not wait for speeches to embody this spirit of fraternity.
The Catholic community, despite its immense grief, refused
revenge.
Muslim leaders came to stand with their Catholic brothers.
The residents of this working-class town, dear Hubert Wulfranc, gathered
in this church square. They had different beliefs or lack thereof, different
histories and different responsibilities, but they met the
crime with the same dignity.
I want to pay tribute to the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul who were present in
the church that morning: Sister Danièle, Sister Huguette, and the memory of
Sister Hélène.
I want to pay tribute to Guy Coponet, who was severely wounded, and the memory of his
wife.
I want to pay tribute to the parishioners and all those who, for ten
years, have kept the memory of Father Hamel alive here.
Finally, I want to address his family: his sister Chantal, his deceased brother, his nephews and nieces, and especially you, dear Roseline Hamel.
You lost your brother in circumstances that no family should ever have to bear.
You could have remained trapped in this suffering. You chose to speak out and even agreed to meet the mother of one of the murderers.
You had the courage to share your pain with her and to understand hers.
This gesture erased nothing.
It did not conflate the victim with the criminal.
It did not diminish the truth of the crime, nor the responsibility of the perpetrators.
But it refused to let their hatred have the last word.
Ten years have passed.
The murderers of Father Jacques Hamel wanted to make this church a place of terror.
It has become a place of memory, peace and fraternity.
Their hatred did not win. This hatred killed.
But the memory of Father Jacques Hamel is all the more powerful for it.
Ten years later, we are not saying that hatred did not
hurt us.
It certainly hurt us. But it did not govern us.
To make this world warmer. More humane.
More fraternal.
This was Father Jacques Hamel's wish.
This is now our task. In his memory.
And for the Republic: this will be our response.
Tribute to Father Jacques Hamel.
Tribute to all the victims of terrorism.
Long live the Republic.
And long live France.
Two terrorists entered a small church in Normandy to
force an 85-year-old priest to his knees and kill him during Mass.
At the foot of his altar,
In the midst of his parishioners.
Terrorism has this implacable quality: it places death at the center of everything.
And the two terrorists succeeded in killing Father Jacques Hamel.
In the most infamous, the most barbaric way imaginable.
By slitting his throat.
But the two assassins never managed to force Father Jacques Hamel to his knees.
At 85, this old man struggled, he endured the blows, he
looked evil in the eye, but he never bent his knees.
Because women and men of faith—whatever their religion—kneel only before the God in whom they believe.
The two terrorists wanted to kill a man, but also to desecrate a faith, humiliate our country, and provoke a war among the French.
But neither Father Hamel, nor the entire Saint-Étienne community, nor the French nation allowed them to fully achieve their goal.
Father Jacques Hamel stood tall in his suffering.
Because he was an upright man. A discreet priest.
Who had served his priesthood for 58 years, among the faithful of Normandy, delivering his homily every Sunday, to offer messages of peace and love to those who listened.
He had the gift of speaking simply to explain the mystery of his faith.
He listened.
He accompanied. He helped others stand tall.
A few weeks before his death, in a message to his parishioners, he urged them to care for the world and make it “warmer, more humane, more fraternal.”
These simple words became his legacy. So did his dignity in the face of horror.
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is precisely the fraternity he invoked in his sermons that has been strengthened by the news of his death.
For Christians, this word has a profound spiritual meaning.
It is also a republican value. Because in our Republic, every citizen is in solidarity with others—regardless of their beliefs, faith, or origins.
Fraternity means knowing how to name evil, looking it in the face, and fighting it, without ever succumbing to vengeance or division. Fraternity is not a weakness.
It is neither the erasure of wrongdoing nor the forgetting of victims.
It does not preclude justice, firmness, or the use of force when the protection of the innocent demands it.
It consists of refusing to let the crime committed against us determine what we will become.
It prevents hatred from passing from one heart to another, from one family to another, from one generation to the next.
On July 26, 2016, republican fraternity triumphed over barbarity, division, and the thirst for revenge.
That very evening, all the residents of Saint-Étienne, believers and secularists alike, spontaneously gathered on the church steps.
This fraternity is an old legacy that refers as much to
the history of our nation as to that of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray:
a land of struggle for workers' rights, and a welcoming land for
entire generations of workers from all
backgrounds.
Here, everyone knows that great achievements are the result of
the coming together of the greatest number.
Everyone knows that in times of hardship, solidarity is essential.
That is what the Republic is all about.
And it is also the freedom to believe.
To not be persecuted for one's faith.
And also not to be forced to have one.
Ladies and gentlemen,
This fraternity, exemplified by the life of Father Hamel, is rooted in a
longer history.
Twenty years before his assassination, seven monks were kidnapped and then
murdered in Tibhirine, Algeria. They had chosen to remain among a Muslim population
with whom they had shared joys, anxieties, and hardships.
They knew the danger. Yet they had refused to abandon those
who had become their neighbors and friends.
In his famous will, Brother Christian de Chergé had
considered the possibility of being killed by a terrorist. He refused in advance to allow the Algerian people and Islam to be indiscriminately
accused of the crime that might befall him.
The circumstances are not the same. But I believe there is,
between Tibhirine and Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a shared moral victory.
The murderers wanted their victims to learn to hate before
they died.
They refused.
They wanted their crime to condemn an entire people or an entire religion.
They refused.
The Catholic community of France had this courage through the words of its representatives – and in particular those of Archbishop
Lebrun of Rouen. You, in turn, refused to hate.
For that is what fraternity is.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In our country, as in the rest of the world, terrorism seeks to sever the bonds patiently built between people.
These bonds have survived them.
This chain of loyalty and courage also leads us to the
Christians of the East.
From Mosul to Qaraqosh, in the Nineveh Plain, some of the oldest Christian communities have been driven from their
homes. Women and men have been abducted, persecuted,
or killed because they were Christians.
France maintains a long-standing bond with them. This bond creates a
responsibility: to defend everywhere freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, and the right of every community to live on the land where its history was written.
But terrorism does not strike just one faith.
In Toulouse and Montauban, it murdered French soldiers because
several were Muslim, before chasing Jewish children and a
teacher in their schoolyard because they were Jewish.
At the Hyper Cacher supermarket, it killed women and men because they
were Jewish.
Elsewhere in the world, he massacres Muslims in their mosques, in markets, or in schools, because they reject his fanaticism.
Let us never forget that the vast majority of victims of jihadist terrorism worldwide are themselves Muslim.
The same hatred targets Jews because they are Jewish.
Christians because they are Christians.
Muslims because their faith refuses to be disfigured by an ideology of death.
It also targets teachers, journalists, police officers, soldiers, and all those who embody a freedom it cannot tolerate.
Ladies and gentlemen, terrorism changes its target, but its goal remains the same: to divide us.
Our response must therefore be just as clear: to protect everyone and leave no one alone in the face of hatred.
Fraternity does not disarm the State. It strengthens it.
The Republic must protect everyone.
It must prevent attacks, prosecute their perpetrators, try their accomplices, and neutralize those who are planning new crimes.
The Islamist terrorist threat has not disappeared. It is transforming, reorganizing itself, and continuing to fuel consciences.
We will continue to fight it relentlessly, through the actions of our intelligence services, our police officers, our gendarmes, our magistrates, and our military.
This fight began in 2015 at the behest of President François Hollande, with an unprecedented mobilization of our forces.
Since 2015, 60 French soldiers have fallen in the fight against terrorism.
I salute their memory and their sacrifice.
Ladies and gentlemen, here in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, you did not wait for speeches to embody this spirit of fraternity.
The Catholic community, despite its immense grief, refused
revenge.
Muslim leaders came to stand with their Catholic brothers.
The residents of this working-class town, dear Hubert Wulfranc, gathered
in this church square. They had different beliefs or lack thereof, different
histories and different responsibilities, but they met the
crime with the same dignity.
I want to pay tribute to the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul who were present in
the church that morning: Sister Danièle, Sister Huguette, and the memory of
Sister Hélène.
I want to pay tribute to Guy Coponet, who was severely wounded, and the memory of his
wife.
I want to pay tribute to the parishioners and all those who, for ten
years, have kept the memory of Father Hamel alive here.
Finally, I want to address his family: his sister Chantal, his deceased brother, his nephews and nieces, and especially you, dear Roseline Hamel.
You lost your brother in circumstances that no family should ever have to bear.
You could have remained trapped in this suffering. You chose to speak out and even agreed to meet the mother of one of the murderers.
You had the courage to share your pain with her and to understand hers.
This gesture erased nothing.
It did not conflate the victim with the criminal.
It did not diminish the truth of the crime, nor the responsibility of the perpetrators.
But it refused to let their hatred have the last word.
Ten years have passed.
The murderers of Father Jacques Hamel wanted to make this church a place of terror.
It has become a place of memory, peace and fraternity.
Their hatred did not win. This hatred killed.
But the memory of Father Jacques Hamel is all the more powerful for it.
Ten years later, we are not saying that hatred did not
hurt us.
It certainly hurt us. But it did not govern us.
To make this world warmer. More humane.
More fraternal.
This was Father Jacques Hamel's wish.
This is now our task. In his memory.
And for the Republic: this will be our response.
Tribute to Father Jacques Hamel.
Tribute to all the victims of terrorism.
Long live the Republic.
And long live France.
Sources: https://eglise.catholique.fr/espace-presse/communiques-de-presse/572747-pere-jacques-hamel-10-ans-apres/ https://rouen.catholique.fr/diocese/articles/471137-deux-jours-dhommage-au-pere-jacques-hamel-une-memoire-toujours-vivante/
Nous n’oublions pas le Père Jacques Hamel.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) July 26, 2026
Il y a dix ans aujourd’hui, il était lâchement assassiné par deux terroristes islamistes, pris pour cible parce qu’il incarnait le refus de la haine, la fraternité et l’espérance.
À ses proches, à ses paroissiens… pic.twitter.com/rLYm1NBfYT
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