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Jacques Hamel was born on 30 November 1930 in Darnétal, in the Seine-Maritime department of Normandy, France. After studies for the priesthood he was ordained on 30 June 1958 for the Archdiocese of Rouen. He spent his entire ministry as a diocesan priest in the same region. He served as a curate in Le Petit-Quevilly and later in Sotteville-lès-Rouen, then as parish priest of Saint-Pierre-lès-Elbeuf and of Cléon. In 2000 he began ministry in the parish of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, south of Rouen. Although he retired from the office of parish priest in 2005 upon reaching the age of seventy-five, he continued to live in the parish and to celebrate Mass and other sacraments as an assisting priest until the last day of his life.

Contemporaries remembered Hamel as a quiet, unassuming, and faithful pastor rather than as a public figure. He was known for regularity in the celebration of weekday Mass, for visiting the sick, and for a simple manner of life. He had completed nearly fifty-eight years of priestly service when he died. Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray is a working-class commune with a mixed population, including a significant Muslim community; Hamel's ministry was that of an ordinary parish priest among his people.

On the morning of 26 July 2016, while Hamel was celebrating Mass in the church of Saint-Étienne, two armed men entered the church and took those present hostage. The attackers, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, forced the eighty-five-year-old priest to kneel and cut his throat at the altar, killing him. They also attacked at least one other person present. Two religious sisters and lay parishioners were among the hostages; one sister escaped and alerted the police. French security forces subsequently shot and killed both assailants. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. The killing of a Catholic priest during the Eucharist was widely condemned in France and abroad as an act of Islamist terrorism.

Pope Francis described Hamel as a martyr slain in hatred of the faith while celebrating the Eucharist. A funeral Mass was held on 2 August 2016 in Rouen Cathedral in the presence of Archbishop Dominique Lebrun of Rouen, many clergy, civil authorities including President François Hollande, and a large congregation. Hamel was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. In 2017 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued a nihil obstat, and the Archdiocese of Rouen opened a diocesan inquiry into his life and death with a view to possible beatification. The cause has not resulted in beatification or canonization. Jacques Hamel remains known as an elderly French parish priest whose death at the altar became, for many Catholics, a contemporary witness of martyrdom in Western Europe.

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