Cardinal Oswald Gracias is encouraging his clergy in the Archdiocese of Mumbai to imitate the recently slain priest, Fr. Jacques Hamel. The French priest was brutally killed by two men proclaiming loyalty to the Islamic State on July 26.

WASHINGTON – While Catholics mourn the senseless killing of a beloved French priest church leaders have emphasized that shock and grief over this attack cannot fuel hatred against Muslims or immigrants.

ROUEN, France – During the Aug. 2 funeral Mass for Father Jacques Hamel, killed a week earlier by men claiming allegiance to the Islamic State, Archbishop Dominique Lebrun of Rouen stressed the need for forgiveness.

PARIS – The urgent pleas for national unity heard after every terrorist attack in France are sounding ever more strained as the killers inspired by the Islamic State group nimbly shift their tactics and targets and confound the politicians struggling to combat them.

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT TO KRAKOW, POLAND – The world, not religion, is waging a war in pieces, Pope Francis said.

ROME – France was convulsed by another horrific attack as armed men burst into a Catholic Church near Rouen and slit the throat of a priest who was saying Mass.

VATICAN CITY – The murder of a priest in northern France, taken hostage with a handful of other faithful during a weekday morning Mass July 26, is another act of "absurd violence" added to too many stories of senseless violence and death, said the Vatican spokesman.

A French priest was killed and another person seriously wounded after two attackers took hostages inside a church in northern France this morning.