Priest Assaulted During Mass in Colmar

Country: France

Date of incident: December 5, 2020


On December 5th, in the church of Saint-Paul in Colmar a priest was physically attacked by a man who sat next to the altar. The perpetrator, unknown to the parishioners refused to respond to the priest's request to leave the choir. He threatened and then beat the priest. The police arrived and the man was hospitalized involuntarily at the psychiatric center of Rouffach. The case is being investigated.

"I have been notified by the minister's office. At the beginning, we all panicked: we thought that it could be an anti-religious aggression linked to an Islamist radicalization", reports the mayor of Colmar Eric Straumann to Le Figaro. According to the elected representative, the man, who had settled near the altar, refused to respond to the young priest's request to move and threatened him several times. As the vicar tried to appease the spirits, the stranger struck the priest on the head and punched him until he fell to the ground. The congregation immediately intervened, and when the police arrived on the scene, the assailant "asked the police to give him their weapon to kill the priest," the mayor reported.

Source: lefigaro.fr 

Symbolic Photo by Isaac Benhesed on Unsplash