Free Republic

A 47-year-old man with known a history of placing suspicious parcels on the city’s metro system has been indicted by prosecutors in Toulouse after allegedly planting an explosive device in the Saint-Etienne cathedral. The man was arrested on Friday by French police in the suburb of Balma several hours after he is said to have placed an explosive device at the foot of the altar of the Saint-Etienne cathedral at around 8:30 am that morning during Mass. As the man attempted to flee the cathedral, a church employee, a sacristan, made an attempt to detain the man before he could...

In a gesture of solidarity following the gruesome killing of a French priest, Muslims on Sunday attended Catholic Mass in churches and cathedrals across France and beyond. Reporters on the scene said that between 100 and 200 Muslims gathered at the towering Gothic cathedral in Rouen, only a few kilometers (miles) from Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, where the 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel was killed by two teenage attackers on Tuesday. “We’re very touched,” Archbishop Dominique Lebrun told broadcaster BFMTV. “It’s an important gesture of fraternity. They’ve told us, and I think they’re sincere, that it’s not Islam which killed Jacques Hamel.” …