'Sisters in sorrow’ offer a testimony of friendship and hope at Rimini Meeting

By Francesca Merlo – Rimini

The 47th Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples has opened its doors at the Rimini Expo Centre, where thousands of visitors are gathering for six days of exhibitions, debates, performances and encounters.

This year’s theme is taken from the final verse of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: “The love which moves the sun and the other stars.”

That love - and its ability to endure even amid unimaginable suffering - was embodied at the Meeting’s opening event by two women united by the same tragedy: Roseline Hamel and Nassera Kermiche.

Roseline is the sister of Father Jacques Hamel, the French priest murdered while celebrating Mass in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray on 26 July 2016. Nassera is the mother of Adel Kermiche, one of the two young men who killed him.

A final evening together

Speaking at the Meeting in one of the pavillions' largest auditoriums, Roseline recalled arriving at her brother’s home with members of her family on 25 July. They had come to accompany him during his final week of work before leaving on holiday together.

That evening, they spoke about the extreme violence human beings can inflict upon one another. Father Hamel told his sister that young people could be manipulated into believing that violence was religion, losing their ability to think freely and even to recognise those they had once loved. During dinner, he said something that Roseline remembers as both beautiful and unusual: “I am so happy to be here with you.”

Father Hamel was not usually someone who expressed his emotions openly, she explained. Neither of them knew that these would be among the last words they shared.

Early the following morning, Roseline heard her brother preparing to leave for Mass. The squeak of a door and the smell of coffee filled the house, but the family remained in bed, deciding they would drink coffee with him when he returned. “I had been waiting for him for so long,” she recalled. But Father Hamel never came home.

After hours of waiting and hoping, Roseline was informed that her brother had been killed. She described the news as an explosion within her, leaving her suspended in “a kind of bubble” and disconnected from reality.

Waiting for a son who would not return

For Nassera, the same morning began with the sight of her son awake unusually early. She asked him why he was up and then returned to bed. A short time later, she received a telephone call from the police asking whether he was at home. When she went to check, she discovered he had left.

As news of the attack began appearing on television, Nassera continued to hope that her son was not involved. She sent her daughter towards the church, but the area had already been sealed off. The hours passed, and Nassera remained convinced that Adel would soon walk through the door. By lunchtime, however, he had still not returned. She was informed that he had perpetrated the attack and that he, too, had been killed.

The two women lost people they loved on opposite sides of the same act of violence. Yet, rather than allowing that violence to have the final word, they eventually sought one another out.

Roseline and Nassera have since become friends and describe themselves as “sisters in sorrow.” With the help of journalist Samuel Lieven, they have recounted their journey in a book bearing that same title.

Their testimony offered a powerful beginning to a Meeting dedicated to asking whether love can still move human hearts in a world marked by war, hatred and division.

Awaiting Pope Leo

Attention in Rimini now turns to Saturday, when Pope Leo XIV will visit the Meeting following the first part of his pastoral journey in the Republic of San Marino.

There, residents of the “Il Colore del Grano” centre for people with disabilities have prepared a rosary with pale blue and white beadss - the colours of the Republic - as well as a letter containing their thoughts and hopes.

Antonia wants to ask the Pope to pray for peace and for children living under bombardment, while others recall Pope John Paul II’s visit to San Marino in 1982.

After meeting the Republic’s authorities and venerating the relics of Saint Marinus in the Basilica dedicated to the country’s patron and founder, Pope Leo will travel to Rimini.

At the Meeting, he will visit two exhibitions: one dedicated to Saint Augustine, whose spiritual legacy lies at the heart of the Pope’s own Augustinian vocation, and another exploring the life of Léon Harmel, the French Catholic industrialist and social reformer who sought to place human dignity at the centre of economic life.

The Pope will then greet children in the Meeting’s Children’s Village before addressing participants in the Grand Auditorium - the most eagerly awaited moment of this year’s gathering.