The Church in Wales is urging clergy to be extra vigilant and to review church security following the murder of a priest in France yesterday.

It also welcomes the announcement from the Home Office of grants under the Places of worship: security funding scheme, to provide protective security measures.

The police will be visiting churches this week to offer security advice. But they stress there is no current intelligence to suggest any planned attack on UK churches and advise churches to be alert, not alarmed.

A Church spokesperson said, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the parishioners and community of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray as they mourn the murder of Father Jacques Hamel. We are particularly conscious of their suffering and of the vulnerability of clergy as we too have experienced the brutal and unprovoked killing of our clergy – Canon Alun Jones, Rector of Llanberis in 1985 and Father Paul Bennett, vicar of St Fagans, Trecynon, in 2007.

“Following Fr Bennett’s death we reviewed security at our buildings and issued personal safety advice for clergy. We will continue to monitor these measures and we welcome the offers of further support to churches from local police forces and the Home Office’s security funding scheme for places of worship.

“We are urging all our clergy to be extra vigilant and to contact the police immediately at any hint of a problem. At the same time, however, we recognise that clergy have an important public role to fulfil and need to be accessible to everyone and that ultimately none of us is immune from attack by those out to cause harm.”

Advice and guidance on security can be found at the following sites:

The National Counter Terrorism website:

Suzy Lamplugh Trust: http://www.suzylamplugh.org/