Ten Years After the Attack: Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray Commemorates Jacques Hamel

Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray – 26 July 2026: Ten years after the terrorist attack at the church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, the town is commemorating the murdered priest Jacques Hamel. The 85-year-old clergyman was killed on 26 July 2016 during a Mass at Saint-Étienne Church. The municipality and the Church have prepared a joint programme for the anniversary.

The commemorations began on Sunday with a gathering at the presbytery and a silent march to the church. In doing so, participants followed the route Hamel had taken on the morning of the attack before Mass. A new memorial plaque was then unveiled at the entrance to the place of worship. The forecourt will henceforth bear the name Parvis Jacques-Hamel.

A Mass was scheduled for 11 a.m. at the church, led by Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille and president of the French Bishops’ Conference. The service was broadcast on television. In the afternoon, a silent remembrance at Hamel’s grave in Bonsecours Cemetery and vespers at the basilica there were to follow.

Several speeches were planned after the Mass at the stele for peace and fraternity in front of the church. The town had announced Mayor Joachim Moyse, MP Édouard Bénard, Archbishop of Rouen Dominique Lebrun, and the prefect of the Normandy region, Jean-Benoît Albertini, as speakers. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu was also listed in the municipality’s official programme for the day.

The attack of 26 July 2016 shook the community near Rouen and became one of the defining Islamist-motivated terrorist crimes of those years in France. The commemoration also honours other victims of the attack alongside Hamel. In preparation for the anniversary, the municipality published interviews, podcasts and statements from relatives, residents, pastoral workers, helpers and municipal employees. They describe the marks the attack has left on the town’s community. Posters in public spaces also recalled the attack in July.

France’s Interior Ministry also paid tribute to Hamel in the week before the anniversary. It noted that the priest and parishioner Janine Coponet, who was injured in the attack, had been posthumously awarded the national medal of recognition for victims of terrorism on 26 July 2025. Coponet died in 2021.

By naming the forecourt, the commemoration is permanently inscribed into the everyday life of the town: the entrance to the church in which Hamel was killed now bears his name.