The Orthodox church where the attack on a priest took place on October 31, 2020 in Lyon.

The man was seriously injured by gunshot.

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J. Pachoud / AFP

It is, for him, a blow to the "freedom of belief of others".

The head of the Church of Greece Monsignor Iéronymos on Saturday denounced the attack on a Greek Orthodox priest who was seriously wounded by gunshots in Lyon, France.

"This horror goes beyond human logic, that a religion can arm the hands of terrorists blinded by hatred", lamented Bishop Iéronymos to the Greek News Agency, Ana.

The Greek Orthodox priest was seriously wounded by gunshot Saturday afternoon in Lyon as he closed his church by a lone man with unknown motives.

Bishop Iéronymos estimated that "intolerant and fanatic extremists, fundamentalists of violence and death use religion, using it as a bullet that aims at the heart of freedom and especially the freedom of belief of others ".

He denounced all those who "use religion as a weapon to eliminate any different opinion" and "as a knife that slaughters human rights".

A suspect arrested

For its part, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced on Twitter “the attack against a member of the Orthodox clergy of Greek origin, near the Church of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Lyon”.

The Greek authorities are "in contact with the competent French authorities", the ministry said.

Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, was shot twice in the liver and touching the tip.

He is in serious condition and has been hospitalized.

The weapon, a sawed-off shotgun, has not been found, according to sources familiar with the matter in Lyon.

Saturday evening, several hours after the incident, the Lyon prosecutor's office indicated that a suspect "who could correspond to the description given by the first witnesses was taken into police custody".

Since then, no information has filtered out on this arrested man.

While France is still in shock from the attack on a church in Nice, which left three people dead, the Lyon prosecutor said "at this stage no hypothesis is ruled out or privileged".

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