Priest killed in France, investigation underway

Gabriella Ceraso - Vatican City

Father Olivier Maire, provincial superior of the Montfortians, was murdered in the Vendée, in Saint-Laurent-Sur-Sevre, where his body was found by the gendarmerie and where the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, is about to go.  The Minister expressed all his support for the Catholics of France.

According media reports, the body was found after a man handed himself in to police and confessed to the priest's murder. According to the newspaper La Croix, the 40-year-old Rwandan-born man is Emmanuel Abayisenga, the main suspect in the arson attack on the Nantes Cathedral in July 2020. Charged with the crime, he was released under judicial supervision at the beginning of June and had found shelter in a religious community, of which the murdered priest was a member, while awaiting trial in 2022. His lawyer had already said, he was a "physically and psychologically fragile" man.