France paid its last respects Tuesday to Father Jacques Hamel, the 85-year-old priest murdered by jihadists last week, at an emotional funeral held under tight security at Rouen cathedral in northern France.


Some 2,000 mourners packed the soaring Gothic sanctuary, with hundreds more watching the ceremony, which began minutes after a heavy rainstorm, on a giant screen outside.

A section of pews in the 11th-century cathedral was filled by residents of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, the nearby industrial town where the two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel’s throat as he celebrated mass in an attack that shocked the country as well as the Catholic Church.