Rimini, August 21, 2026 – It was the meeting between Roseline Hamel and Nassera Kermiche that opened the Meeting in Rimini. Roseline is the sister of Father Jacques Hamel, killed in 2016 in an attack. Nassera is the mother of Adel, one of the attackers, killed that same day, July 26, during the intervention of the police forces.
According to some rumors, Roseline and Nassera could have a private meeting with the Pope tomorrow, during Leo XIV’s visit to the Meeting.
The memory of that searing pain: “How could I survive?”
Roseline recalls in detail that day, from the smell of the coffee prepared by her priest brother before going to celebrate mass to the news she initially did not want to believe.
“A hellish day”, said Father Jacques’ sister. “I asked myself how I could survive all this, how I could find a new meaning to my life. I was looking for an answer in the Gospel, something to comfort me. I started talking to God, I continued for months. I was impatient because no answer came. Then a passage from the Gospel, a homily, and something changed. I was ready to let myself die, but I pulled myself together for my children. I asked Mary for the strength to go on.”
“I started talking to God, looking for an answer: I found it”
“Then I kept thinking about this woman I didn’t know,” Nassera, “a mother like me. I wondered what life was like for that mother with a son who had done such a thing. I thought: I can’t leave her alone because she has suffered more than I have. From that moment I looked for her, found her, we started talking and in the end I asked her to meet.”
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“I was trying to understand why my son had participated in that attack”
Nassera Kermiche, who for security reasons gave her testimony at the Meeting wearing sunglasses and shown only obliquely to avoid being recognized, said that after the attack, her whole family “was devastated, I was trying to understand why it happened, how my son had taken part in this attack.”
“And then my thoughts went to the victims”
The first months were a search for an explanation: “At first I watched the news twenty-four hours a day and tried to understand.” Then her thoughts went to the victims: “I thought of the nuns and parishioners who were in the church and I told myself: I have to manage to contact them to understand what happened. I took the initiative, I managed to contact the nuns. I did it too soon, just two months after the tragedy, at first they told me it was too hard to talk about what happened. I understood the trauma, I told myself I would wait.” Then when ”A journalist told me that Father Hamel’s sister wanted to meet me it was a breath of life.”
The first contact between the two women: “I have been waiting for her for a long time”
And when Roseline moved from phone calls to asking for a face-to-face meeting, Nassera replied: “I have been waiting for her for a long time.” Then the woman emphasized 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 give my testimony.”
The reconstruction of the attack
On July 26, 2016, while celebrating mass in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, in Normandy, Father Jacques Hamel, 85 years old, was beheaded during a hostage-taking carried out in his parish by two Islamic extremists: Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean. A nun present managed to leave the church and alert the police forces. Shortly after, the two extremists tried to leave the church using the hostages as shields, but were killed by the officers.
