The Sun. — 1857-01-05 (London, England)

VERGES. Assassinated in a church—the Church of St. Etienne du Mont. Assassinated at the close of a religious ceremony—the end of the solemn procession terminating the sacred rites of the neuvaine of Sainte Genevieve. Every attribute of the horrible seems united to enhance the atrocity of the crime which has just startled and horrified the Parisians. The sanctity of the place, the sanctity of the time, the sanctity of the victim, even, be it said, the sacred office of the priesthood, outraged in the person of the wretched being by whom this deed of blood was dreadfully perpetrated. Although the news of this terrible occurrence has been brought to us in the first place abruptly and almost incoherently, through the flashes of the submarine electric telegraph, we are already in possession of the fact that the assassin, though a priest, was a priest under an interdict, a priest whose functions had been suspended. Obviously with full reason on the part of his superiors— seeing the frightful atrocity by which the cause of his spiritual suspension has been consummated ! No wonder the event which is now spreading an universal feeling of horror throughout Christendom should have immediately carried, from one extremity of Paris to the other, but one mingled sentiment of grief aid consternation. No wonder that a crime so wholly unparalleled—the murder of a bishop by a priest, and that too within the sanctuary of a temple dedicated to the GOD of Christianity--should have been heard of at the first moment with a very general sense of incredulity. No wonder, however, when the tidings were recognised directly afterwards to be beyond the reach of any doubt whatsoever, no wonder they were regarded then, even by our volatile neighbours, with feelings that can be only expressed as those of profound horror and astonishment.  It is remarkable, to say the very least of it, that the two last of the venerable Archbishops of Paris—AFIRE and &noun—should have " died the death" by assassination. The former by the bullet of an incendiary revolutionist, the latter by the dagger of a suspended priest. The murder of Archbishop AFIRE, it cannot easily be forgotten, partook in a great measure of the glory and of the sublimity of martyrdom. The victim fell, carrying in his hand—literally—the Palm of Peace and of Victory ! His death, be it, reverently spoken, was an illustration, a visible, historical illustration, of the DivINE Beatitude—" Blessed are the peacemakers." His life, as he prayed it might be, was the last sacrifice in that deadly civil war. His last words were memorable, were magnificent —Bonus Pastor dat animam suam pro oribus suis. His memory is embalmed in the grateful recollections of the multitude. The assansination of Archbishop SIBOUR, none the less in reality than that of his revered predecessor, partook so far of the august attributes of martyrdom, inasmuch as he fell a victim to the rigid discharge of his ecclesiastical duties, for inasmuch, indeed, as he fell a victim actually to his resolute vindication of the sanctity of the office of the priesthood. Nominated in the summer of 1848 to the Archi episcopal see of Paris, and to the Primacy of France, by the then Republican Dictator, Genera.