Details are emerging of an incident which took place in Verdun, north east of France, last Friday, November 10th during which two men entered a Carmelite monastery, asked to see the chapel and proceeded to disrupt evening prayers by praying aloud in Arabic, warning the nuns present that they must convert to Islam.
Verdun is famous in European history because the largest and longest battle of the First World War was staged there; it was fought on February 21 and December 18 1916, between the German and French armies.
The French daily, L’Est Republicain, quotes the Bishop of Verdun, Monsignor Jean-Paul Gusching as describing how the two men, of approximately 30 years of age, engaged one of the nuns at the reception of the monastery just before 5pm last Friday evening.
When the Carmelite sister explained, after a short discussion, that she had to attend the office of vespers, the men asked if they could be present, to which the nun agreed.
The request in itself would not have appeared unusual; home to ten cloistered nuns, ranging from 36 to 84 years of age, the community often welcomes visitors wishing to join them in prayer.
Once inside the monastery grounds, however, and within the small chapel where the nuns were gathered, the two men proceeded to pray aloud in Arabic, ‘’presenting themselves are heralds’’, according to the bishop, and warning the nuns that if they did not convert to Islam, they would be going to hell.
Following the bizarre encounter, one of the men wrote ‘’Allah Akbar’’ in the monastery’s visitor book, before the pair exited the building, L’Est Republicain notes.
Although no physical violence took place during the incident, the nuns were ‘’deeply shocked’’ by the event, according to the bishop, adding that the incident was reported to police and two arrests being made the following day.
One may recall the attack at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy, on July 26th, 2016, when an 85-year-old priest, Father Jacques Hamel, was assassinated by two Islamic State knifemen on the altar of his parish church during morning Mass.
Another incident in France. As recently as early October, a man interrupted weekday morning Mass in the city of Nantes, brandishing a gun and threatening the parish priest in front of a hundred parishioners.
The Archbishop of Mosul (Iraq), Monsignor Amel Shimoun Nona, ominously wrote in 2014, ‘‘our suffering is a prelude to what you, European Christians and westerners, will suffer in a not so distant future’’.
Similarly, in 2016, Bishop Isa Gürbüz, head of the Syrian Orthodox church in Switzerland warned Europeans that ‘’the Muslims are in Europe to take power…In 20 or 30 years, there will be in Europe an Islamic majority…What’s happening in the Middle East will happen in Europe”, the Syrian bishop warned.
Given the current climate, there is certain uneasiness amongst French Catholics that these warnings may not be as outlandish as they would once have seemed.
