Yesterday’s barbarous killing of an elderly priest who was celebrating Mass in a small town near Rouen in France marks a significant higher notch in the horror inflicted by Islamic terror in the heart of Europe.

The much-loved priest, who refused to retire when he turned 75 years many years ago, was forced to kneel by his captors who then proceeded to cut his throat while filming each other on video and while preaching in Arabic to the cowering few nuns and few worshippers in the church.

So far, in all the terrorist attacks that there have been in France, all the victims were lay.

The offices of Charlie Hebdo were lay.

So too the Bataclan nightclub in Paris.

So too the crowds watching the Bastille Day fireworks in Nice.

This was the first attack whose target was a church and whose victim was a priest.

This attack comes as the culmination, so far, of attacks that have now spread all over Europe, and which over the past days have targeted Germany, the other great European country. Ironically, the attack which was at first thought to be by Islamic terrorists, the one in Munich, was the work of a right-wing lone and deranged boy.

There is clearly a strategy at work here – to select soft targets that are not well-guarded and to instill terror and fear in the population.

We may expect more and more such attacks inn the future, anywhere and everywhere. There is absolutely no way a country can defend all its soft targets from such acts of terror. People mention Israel as a country that is very well-defended but even there sporadic and individual acts of terror still take place.

The West must study and understand the underlying strategy of these acts of terror. It aims to raise the temper of the population, to stimulate an equally harsh reaction by the Right-Wing with maybe some acts of violence against Muslims in general.

This is the strategy that is at work everywhere in the world. We may not be so exposed to it because such terror is a novelty to us, but such a strategy has been used, for instance in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.

Then when the Christians become once again Crusaders, there will be the much-heralded Clash of Civilisations we have read about so often in the past.

The right strategy for the peoples and the governments of the West, the civilization of the West, the product of Christianity, the Reformation, the French Revolution and of so much flowering of the Arts – is to reject to be dragged down this road.

In the words written by the victim, Fr Jacques Hamel, "attentive to what will happen in our world at this moment. Let us pray for those who are most in need, for peace, for a better life together ".

And from the heart of Europe and of Christianity, one plea  must ring out today: “Santo subito”.