Flowers, flags, questions: learning about a dark day

Flowers, photos, and flags on the wall of a building, and in front of it, children with hymnals. What’s going on at this Paris restaurant? A picture and its story.

La Belle Equipe is the name of the restaurant. It is less than 200 metres away from the New Apostolic congregation Paris-Centre. On 15 November 2025, the children from the congregation’s Religious Instruction class met in the church with their teachers and two Priests. Together they watched a film that gently tells the story of an event that happened when most of the children were not even born yet.

The restaurant La Belle Équipe was one of the eight places in and around Paris targeted by Islamist terrorists, who killed 130 people and injured almost 700 people, some of them seriously, on 13 November 2015. It was the most serious terrorist attack in France to date.

The children and their teachers went—much like the congregation’s young people did ten years ago—to the memorial wall at the restaurant, where people had pinned photos of the victims to the wall and laid flowers. The boys and girls sang two verses from the song “Jésus soit avec vous à jamais” (“God be with you till we meet again”) and observed a minute’s silence.

Afterwards, they went back to the church and prayed together. The group stayed together for dinner, during which they talked about what they had seen and felt, the New Apostolic Church France reports on its website. And the children had lots of questions. 

Photo: ENA France