The testimony of the bishop of Saint-Denis: “Families and children have seen and heard the horror.”

The hideout of the jihadists who sowed death and havoc in Paris and France was here in Saint-Denis, in rue du Corbillon 8, a few steps away from the cathedral. Special police forces staged a siege that began on Wednesday, at 4:25 am, and went on for the entire morning. This is among the most multiethnic areas of Ille-de-France, where live Muslims and veiled Muslim women as well as Jews wearing kippahs on their heads, Christians and Protestants. Monsignor Pascal Delannoy is the bishop of this diocese in the Île-de-France.

Your Excellency, can you tell us what happened in St.Denis?

“It will take time before people recover from the events that took place on Wednesday, in the early hours of the day and throughout the morning. Everyone was forced to stay indoors. They heard gunfire and explosions without understanding exactly what was going on. They had very little information. Everything was experienced with deep anxiety. My thoughts go in particular to families and children who have seen and heard everything. I truly hope that in the coming days everyone may find the courage and the strength to share their feelings about what happened. It would be worse for them not to express themselves and to withdraw, without processing what they have experienced. Inner healing is extremely important to return to a normal and peaceful life.”

Could you describe Saint-Denis?

“Saint-Denis is the first town of the Department of ‘Seine-Saint-Denis’. It has over 100 thousand inhabitants. Thus it is a very large city, with people from over 90 different countries. It can thus be described as a multi-religious and multicultural city. There are Christians, Jews and Muslims, with their churches, synagogues, mosques and places for prayer.”

How was this coexistence until Wednesday?

“It wouldn’t be wrong to say that here in Saint-Denis relations between people belonging to different religious communities take place on a daily basis. People live close to each other, they go to the same sports associations and their children attend the same schools. Thus this proximity is part of everyday life. We too, members of the Christian Church, have always sought to engage in dialogue with all those open to do so: dialogue with Muslims and with the Jewish community. Past Saturday, for example, I attended a celebration marking the 50^th anniversary of Nostra Aetate in a synagogue of our diocese.”

But here in Saint-Denis lived the Jihadist group guilty of the Paris terror attacks. How did you react when you heard the news?

“It came as a shock. The blitz took place on a very busy street. It’s a pedestrian street that links the train station to the Basilica cathedral. Thousands of people walk by it every day. I take this street to go the cathedral. That’s why the news that acts of extreme violence were carried out in a place that is part of our daily life came as a shock. It’s shocking and it causes feelings of diffidence and mistrust.

There’s a question that needs to be answered: how can a climate of mutual trust be created or rekindled in the coming days and weeks?

There is an evident risk of succumbing to fear.  And fear is paralyzing.

Pope Francis said: “Also today Jesus is weeping.”

“I have also used that expression during the Mass celebrated in the cathedral. It’s a comment to the page in the Gospel where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. I have said that we too, faced with these event, have felt the strong need to cry, to cry together with all those willing to do so, in a spirit of fraternity and solidarity. We are appalled by these acts of extreme violence that have occurred before our own eyes. But as I was saying during Mass, in these tragic events God is always on our side. He continues to visit us, to meet us, and then it’s up to us to bring his peace throughout the world.”