Rimini, the embrace between Father Hamel's sister and the mother of an attacker opens the Meeting

It is the testimony of Roseline Hamel and Nassera Kermiche, "sisters of pain", that opens the Meeting in Rimini. Roseline is the sister of Father Jacques Hamel, killed in 2016 in an attack. Nassera was the mother of Adel, one of the attackers, killed that same day, July 26, during the intervention of the police.

According to what we learn, Roseline and Nassera could have a private meeting with the Pope tomorrow, during Leo XIV's visit to the Meeting. Roseline remembers that day in detail, from the smell of the coffee prepared by her priest brother before going to celebrate mass to the news that she doesn't want to believe at first.

“A hell of a day,” said Father Jacques' sister. "I asked myself how I could survive all this, how I could find a new meaning in my life. I was looking for an answer in the Gospel, something that would comfort me", "I kept thinking about this woman I didn't know", Nassera, "a mother like me. I thought what the life of that mother with a son who had done something like that was like. I thought: I can't leave her alone because she suffered more than me".

Nassera Kermiche, who for security reasons gave her testimony at the Meeting wearing sunglasses and portrayed only obliquely so as not to be recognised, said that, after the attack, her whole family "was devastated, I was trying to understand why it had happened, how my son had participated in this attack" but when "a journalist told me that Father Hamel's sister wanted to meet me it was a breath of life". And when Roseline went from the phone calls to ask for a meeting in person, Nassera replied: "I've been waiting for her for a long time." Then the woman underlined that she had seen her son's deviance before that event and that she had sought help from institutions but "nothing was done" and also for this reason "I chose to bear my testimony".