Martyr

On July 26, 2016, in a little town in Normandy, France, Father Jacques Hamel, 86 years old, had his throat cut savagely by Jihadists as he celebrated morning mass. The reaction around the world was unbelief and horror. But who was this priest who had given so much of himself as a priest in the Algerian War, as worker priest among the destitute, and as a parish priest? Ethicist and interreligious dialogue specialist Jan de Volder researches this senseless event and reveals the life, commitment, and fate of this holy man, the first martyr of the twenty-first century in Europe.