A volunteer church assistant has confessed to setting the fire that severely damaged a Gothic cathedral in Nantes, western France, his lawyer said Sunday, reports The Guardian.
The 39-year-old, an asylum-seeker from Rwanda who has lived in France for several years, was arrested on Saturday after laboratory analysis determined that arson was the likely cause of the blaze, the local prosecutor’s office said.
“My client has cooperated,” the man’s lawyer, Quentin Chabert, told the Presse-Ocean newspaper, without elaborating on motives for attempting to burn down the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
“He bitterly regrets his actions … My client is consumed with remorse,” Chabert said.
Prosecutors opened an arson inquiry following the early morning fire on 18 July, after finding that it broke out in three different places in the church, which the volunteer had locked up the night before.
He was taken in for questioning the next day but later released without charge, with the cathedral’s rector saying: “I trust him like I trust all the helpers.”