Pastor stabbed in France during pray

Christian Pastor was stabbed about 8.40pm on Tuesday in front of a congregation of some 2,500 young people during the evening praying in his church, which provoked shock and revulsion.

Brother Roger was stabbed three times in the throat and back during a service in the Reconciliation Church at Taizй in eastern France on Tuesday evening.

He was a 90-year-old Protestant pastor who founded the Taizй religious community in 1940.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Benedict and heads of state led tributes to 90-year-old Brother Roger, a Swiss-born Protestant pastor and the head of the Taizй community, according to Telegraph.

Investigators said the self-confessed killer, a 36-year-old Romanian woman identified only as Luminita, claimed to have attacked Brother Roger after failing to attract his attention. Details of the death of a man who dedicated his life to the causes of peace and ecumenism caused widespread disgust.

A gendarmerie spokesman in the nearby town of Macon in Burgundy said a 36-year-old Romanian woman had been wrestled to the ground by two members of the congregation immediately after the killing and was now in custody.

The local public prosecutor, Jean-Louis Coste, said the woman, who had arrived at Taizй alone two days earlier, was "not unbalanced enough to justify psychiatric care" and that a judicial investigation would be opened soon, Guardian says.

The woman, named as Luminita Solcan, spoke fairly coherently and was capable of undergoing interrogation, he said. "She said that she didn't intend to kill him but that she wanted to attract his attention. She admits the facts."

Brother Roger's funeral will be held next Tuesday in the church and he will be buried in the cemetery at Taizй.

Increasingly frail, and often confined to a wheelchair, he planned to retire this year and had already chosen as his successor a German Roman Catholic, Brother Aloпs.