Algeria tormented by violence, bearing witness
to the possibility of a dialogue with Muslims
Last update: 2018-02-02 14:43:25
[This article is
published in Oasis n. 18. Click here to buy a copy of this issue of Oasis
and here to subscribe to the journal]
The monastery of
Tibhirine – the gardens – has these prophetic words on its coat of arms: “Sign on the Mountains”. Indeed, it is
1,000 feet above sea level on the spurs of the Algerian Atlas, where the view is broad and the very beautiful
sunsets made Brother Luc,
the doctor who had lived in those gardens for fifty years, even during the
harshest moments of the civil war; say: “Let’s wait for tomorrow’s sunset to go
away!”. [1]
The most beautiful
and deeply rooted plants of those gardens, which even today do not cease to provoke
wonder and to generate questions, are the places of the lives and the graves
of the seven brothers who were
killed in 1996.
Every day they are
visited by tens of people from every horizon, but above all Algerians and Muslims: Tibhirine has become more than
ever before a sign on the mountains, an emblem and symbol of the mysterious
reasons for which one can live and one can die, for love’s sake, in full
freedom.
Only the
decapitated heads of the brothers make fecund the land of the monastery, whereas
their bodies, buried nobody knows where, as happened with so many other
innocent victims of the civil war, make the whole of Algeria a great reliquary.
Thanks to these men of God it is still possible to believe in the triumph of
life over death and of love over hatred.
These gardens were
planted in Algerian soil in the middle of the 1930s. At that time France could
rely in its overseas territories upon the presence of a million settlers who
for the most part were Catholics.
The monastery of Tibhirine was born and grew for these Christians. Conceived of like the
great monasteries of the West, Tibhirine was built as a fortress, at the centre
of a great estate, where the monks prayed, worked and lived in a simple and
fraternal life, in contact with, and at the service of, above all their
coreligionists, but also giving material help and indicating to the habitants
of the locality, of Berber origins,
a rational and modern way of engaging in agriculture.
For about thirty
years, amidst all the changing events that mark the lives of all communities,
Tibhirine grew or shrunk as an extension of a French monastery in the land of
Algeria.
Not
only guests, but guests who were friends…
The war of
independence and the end of colonial power produced a great turning point:
Algeria was emptied of its settlers. The great exodus of Christians changed not
so much the deep heart as the face of the monastic community and its reasons
for staying in the land of Algeria.
The hope of native
vocations came to a halt and the monks were guests in a land that they have
seen as belonging to their homeland. Love for the place and for their brothers
which characterised their monastic life, which was lived according to the Benedictine Rules,
led the monks to remain in a condition of poverty and weakness, supporting the
lean Algerian Church, which was an almost invisible drop of water in the great
Muslim sea, ‘a Cistercian wreck in the ocean of Islam’, [2] as Father Christian put it.
The new situation, with its consequent instability, led the community to
near extinction: a reinforcement through new arrivals from French monasteries
in 1964 and the dispensary of Brother Luc, which was open to all sick people
who came (‘the devil as well if he comes’, he said), allowed the monastery new
growth.
The gardens of Tibhirine, with the
vast cloister of more than 300 hectares, were reduced to simple orchards of
twelve hectares that were cultivated together with the neighbouring people. The
long history of nearness to the people of the locality made the Christian monks
not only guests but also guests who were friends.
The elderly brothers, who had persevered and were known by everybody,
died one by one but remained always close to the inhabitants of the village
which had grown up near to the monastery. In the monastic cemetery they were at
rest under rough gravestones that bore only their names and the dates of their
coming into and leaving this world.
Other brothers arrived: a few, but highly motivated, and the community
became increasingly stable and rooted in the locality. The election of Christian de Chergé as prior of
the community in 1984 marked a turning point and involved a leadership that was
decidedly directed towards dialogue and
an understanding of the religious inheritance of their Muslim neighbours.
Fr. Christian explained this relationship of deep friendship that was
gradually developed: “People praying amidst other people praying… nothing could
be explained outside a constant communal presence and the faithfulness of each
member to humble daily reality, from the gate of the gardens, from the kitchen
to the lectio divina and in to the liturgy of the hours. The
dialogue that thus came to be constructed has its forms, which are essentially
characterised by the fact that we never take the initiative. I would like to
define it as being existential. It is the outcome of a long ‘living together’
and of shared concerns, ones that are at times very concrete. This means that
it is rarely of a strictly theological character. We have, rather, the tendency
to flee from diatribes of this kind, which we see as being limited. Essential
dialogue, therefore, that is to say concerning the material and the spiritual
at one and the same time, the daily and the eternal, as a demonstration of how
true it is that the man or the woman who calls on us can be welcomed only in
their concrete and mysterious reality of their being children of God, ‘created
first in Christ? (Eph 2:10). We would cease to be Christians – and
also simply men – if we were to mutilate the other as regards his hidden
dimension so as to encounter him solely ‘man to man’, that is to say in a
humanity emptied of any reference to God, of any personal relationship and thus
alone with the Totally-Other, deprived of any way out to an unknown life
beyond”. [3]
The key word of the monks of Tibhirine was thus “presence”. A presence that was friendly and fraternal,
trusting that they would also be welcomed by their neighbours. The encounter
with the other took place in daily life: it was a dialogue of life, inter-culturality
and inter-religiosity put into practice, in an exchange of gifts which upheld
each person in his or her own identity.
The
Seven Brothers In Thibirine Trappist Monastery
Who were these men
thirsty for the absolute, aware that they were carrying a treasure in vases of
clay and were ready to discover it in the hearts, in the lives and in the
religion of their neighbours as well?
A few
words are sufficient to characterise the physiognomy of these seven brothers
who were so different from each other and so united in the face of danger and
death. Through the description of them made by one of the survivors, Fr.
Jean-Pierre Schumacher, here is a draft of such a description. [4]
Father
Christian De Chergé What struck me in him was his
inner passion for the discovery of the Muslim soul and to live this communion
with them and with God, albeit remaining truly a monk and a Christian. He
wanted to be taken by everything in Islam which is a seed of the Word, a sign
of His active presence and of His breath as a creator, to be as near as
possible to his Muslim brothers: to go to God with them, but in Jesus Christ,
in his Spirit and as an authentic member of his Church. Christian had to
reconcile this personal appeal with that of the community, which was also a
bearer of a mission of presence in a Muslim land.
Brother Luke He was not a priest, he was a brother. We could confide in him
because he was full of wisdom. When we had a problem or a difficulty in our
relationship with a brother, the first thing we did was to go to see Brother
Luc because we well know how he would have responded. During our meetings, even
during the period of tension and fear, he always had some words to make us
laugh. He was valuable for our common life…As a medical doctor, he was in the
dispensary for the whole of the day, and in addition he was responsible for the
kitchen!’
Father
Christophe What has stayed in my mind as
regards Christophe during the last two years is his inner torment as regards
the ‘Amen’ that he had to pronounce, which was so difficult to say but which he
did not want to avoid and which he ended up by taking upon himself out of his
love for Jesus who dwelt in him completely. He allowed himself to be led
towards likeness with Christ and towards his Paschal Mystery. All of this was
in line with his burning soul, directed forwards, concerned to abandon himself
to love of Christ, of his brothers, of the poor…with his weakness, his
frailties.
Father Bruno What characterised Bruno was his calm, his reserved, smiling and
affable character, despite the impression that he gave when first encountered
of being severe and in a hurry. The Superior of Fes, he loved the simple and
hidden life that was led in this small monastery. In Fes, in the spring, a part
of the garden and the walkway reserved to guests became a feast of colours
thanks to the flowers that he grew: this was an expression of his secret soul.
Brother Michel A silent, poor and humble man, he lived in simplicity the giving
of himself to God and the community. His search for God in the monastery was
inseparably linked to the search for the soul of Islam, to be in communion with
his Muslim brothers and to offer himself to them. By some brothers of the
community and by many guests he was seen as a saint, but I doubt that he
realised this…
Father
Célestin The foundation and the source of
the spiritual life of Célestin was his link with Christ through his priesthood
and religious profession, the educational role that he had performed for twenty
years with people on the streets (drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes), and
his tie of friendship with an Algerian partisan that he had saved during his
military service as a male nurse in Algeria and, through him, with the whole of
the Algerian people.
Brother Paul Joyous, affable, ready to help and with golden hands, Brother Paul
was loved by everyone, by his neighbours, by the country folk associated with
the work of the monks. He did not know Arabic but he managed to make himself
understood with signs and above all with works. A realist, he had no illusions
about the political and economic situation of Algeria: he was aware of what
could happen at any moment. What a mystery it was that he joined the brothers
out of faithfulness to God, to them and to Algeria precisely on the eve of the
kidnapping!
The
unleashing of violence
The Algerians had obtained their independence at a
heavy price in 1962 and
had then chosen to follow the path of socialism, but without achieving the
hoped-for results. In 1988 the situation of deterioration in which the country
found itself had provoked disorders in Algeria and in other cities, fostering
the political rise of a strict Islam which offered itself as a solution to all
problems: it preached virtue, helped the poor, and declared war on a corrupt
West.
The
whole of the region of Médéa,
where the monastery was located, was a feud of the FIS (the Islamic Salvation
Front) which in 1990 had won the elections in most of the communes of Algeria.
All the neighbours of the monks, Berber country folk who were very poor and
very religious, had voted for them by an overwhelming majority. ‘It is the
party of God’, they said.
On 11
January 1992 the army intervened with a coup d’état: it annulled the elections
and dissolved the winning party. Armed groups then came into existence: the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS) and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
Civilians were also attacked and it was suggested to foreigners that they
should leave the country. Algeria fell into chaos and into civil war – a
pitiless struggle to keep or win power.
On
Christmas Eve 1993 the brothers of Tibhirine received a “visit” in the monastery
from the emir of the GIA, Sayyah
Attiya, with a group of another five armed men. They had come to ask for
medicines and money and wanted to take Brother Luc, the doctor, with them.
Christian
de Chergé, running many risks, opposed these requests. A few days earlier
twelve Croats who worked on a building site had been murdered in Tamesguida, a few kilometres from the
monastery. The brothers knew them because they used to come to the monastery on
feast days. Finally, the emir went away but he promised to come back. The pass
word that he laid down to be received with his men was “Monsieur Christian”.
Fr.
Christophe left the basement where he had been hiding when he heard the ringing
of the bells that announced the Holy Mass of midnight, amazed that the brothers
were still alive. The monks went to church to celebrate the night of the
Nativity as though it was a new birth for them. For them the question now posed
itself of their departure. After a great deal of reflection, they freely
decided to stay, at least for the moment: how could they leave their lives, the
country, their Muslim neighbours and the Church of Algeria? But around them was
unleashed violence and they knew that the possibility of a violent death was
not out of the question. Fr. Christian narrated the experience of Christmas Eve
in the following way:
After
the Christmas visit, I needed fifteen days, three weeks to return from my
death. Death – you can be sure – is something you accept very quickly, but then
to get back on your feet you need a great deal of time. Afterwards I said to
myself: “those people, that man with whom I had such a tense dialogue…what
prayer can I say for him? I cannot ask God: kill him. But I can ask: disarm
him”. Then I asked myself: “Do I have the right to ask, disarm him, if I do not
begin by asking: disarm me and disarm us in the community?” Now this is my
prayer which I confide to you in all simplicity. [5]
Brother
Luc prayed to the universal Prayer of the Holy Mass ‘Lord, give us the grace to
die without hatred in our hearts’.: [6] Brother Michel confided to
Fr. Christophe: ‘It is no longer as it once was. Ever since ‘they’ came, I have
had no strength’. [7]
An
unpublished work by Fr. Christian
Fr.
Christian had begun the composition of his will before the massacre of the
Croats and he had finished it before the Christmas visit of the mujahidin:
it is an admirable text, very well known, which will remain as a masterpiece of
contemporary religious literature.
But
the will was accompanied by a note, which has not hitherto been published, to
Christophe who was the second Superior of the community: “For Brother
Christophe, if it should happen that…”. The emir Sayyah Attiya had left behind
him as a password “Monsieur Christian” and Christian, as a the Superior,
thought that he was the only target of the Islamists. In this note, which is
extremely important and moving, he at first gave some telephone numbers of people
who should be informed (the prefect, the gendarmes, the bishop), if it
should happen that…and then wrote:
Measures should be
taken for an immediate evacuation, unless something else should be done, and
for the surveillance of the places that are abandoned. The data on the
brothers, and on me as well, are to be found in the document holder. I think
with love of the future of Mohamed, of his family, of our Ali and of the
country folk who work in association with us. If I meet a brutal death, I would
like to remain amongst them, buried in the atrium, on the opposite side of the
foundation cross, of the grave of our Father Aubin. My mother should feel
sweetness towards me. To everyone and to each one I ask mercy and the alms of a
remembrance in the Eucharist. May God continue the work that has been begun
here! I thank him for having allowed me, I believe, to consent to the GIFT for
EVERYONE. Through you. I embrace everyone, THANK YOU for so much trust.: [8]
War correspondence
The spread of
hatred, of fear and of madness grew and cost the lives of about 200,000 people,
amongst whom also Christian men and women religious. At the end of August 1996
nineteen religious were killed during the civil war, amongst whom – the last –
the Bishop of Oran, Pierre Claverie.
The correspondence
of Brother Luc, more than so many other words, allows us to see the climate of
those tragic years and the journey of self-giving that he had arrived at.
Here the situation
has become disquieting and perhaps in the future it will be
dangerous…Death…would be witness rendered to the absolute of God. I am like an
old overcoat, consumed, with holes, with patches, but inside my soul still
sings. In a little while it will be Christmas. A liberator was born for us.
Since 1 December an ultimatum of the GIA has been addressed to all foreigners
to leave the country (17 December 1993).
Here our situation
is troubling and dangerous. We live in a climate of violence. We are isolated,
we are alone, but the Lord is with us. Despite the difficult situation we
persist in remaining in Faith and Charity. What can happen to us? To go to see
God and be flooded with His tenderness. The Lord is the great merciful one and
the great forgiver (9 January 1994).
When you read
this letter, Lent will be about to finish and the light of Easter will begin to
shine forth. Every year, with emotion and wonder, I see the first almond trees
in blossom. Spring, for man, for a Christian, consists of offering his life to
God, an offering that one should renew every day during the course of the
years. But at the end of the road there is Easter with its Light and its Joy.
Here the violence continues (6 March 1994).
Thank you for
following us in your thoughts amidst the events of Algeria. A man religious and
a woman religious have been murdered. There is no truce as regards the
violence. Here we are seven men religious and we go on. We are like a bird on a
branch, ready to fly towards the sky! A new heaven and a new earth. Wherever we
go, wherever we are, God accompanies us. God is not against us, but with us.
When we disembark from this planet, still immerged all of us in our earthly worries,
we will not be afraid because in crossing the anxiety-inducing threshold of
death we will find Christ who will take us into the house of the Father (25 May
1994).
Recently I was
reflecting on that thought of Pascal: ‘Men never do evil so completely and so
joyously as when they do it for religious reasons’ (June 1994).
Here it is very hot
and in addition a fire has been started on the mountains in front of the
monastery. The violence persists and becomes worse. On 11 July there were
twelve deaths in Algiers. I do not think that a dialogue is possible. It is a
trial of strength. And we always stay in Tibhirine in an official context. For
the moment it is a place of calm and of peace. The future? I am more than
eighty years old. Fear is an absence of faith, faith transforms anxiety into
trust. So of whom and of what should we be afraid? (12 July 1994).
Jesus is the free
man to the utmost, free in everything. To love God in truth is thus to accept,
like him, death without reservations. In being an encounter with God, death
cannot be the object of terror. Death is God! (28 May 1995).
So I am 82. An old
man is only a miserable thing unless his soul sings. Pray for me that the Lord
may protect me in joy. Our region is once again immersed in the horrors of
violence. God does not want misfortune. He is with the victims. God is with us
(13 March 1996).
Here the violence
is always at the same level, even though the censorship wants to conceal it.
How can we move out of it? I do not think that violence can extirpate
violence. We cannot exist as men if we do not agree to be made images of
Love, as it is expressed in Christ, the just man who wanted to endure the fate
of the unjust (24 March 1996, two days before the kidnapping). [9]
Towards
Easter
Each monk for his
part and the community as a whole had prepared themselves for the eventuality
of a violent death. The pathway had been different for each brother, according
to his age, temperament, and the level of human and spiritual maturity he had
achieved.
This is what Fr.
Jean-Pierre tells us: “What we experienced at Tibhirine, together, was an
action of graces. We prepared ourselves together. Out of faithfulness to our
vocation we decided to stay here, knowing very well what could happen to us.
The Lord invited us and we could have withdrawn, even though around us violent
men tried to make us leave, as did official requests. But we had our teacher
and we took a pledge in front of him. Secondly, there was our wish to remain
faithful to the people around us, not to abandon them: they were threatened as
we were, placed between two fires, between the army and the terrorists. The
decision not to separate had already been taken in 1993 and even if we had been
dispersed by force we found have come together again in Morocco to begin again,
settling in another Muslim country”. [10]
Death
What had been
long feared, suffered, prepared for and accepted, then took place. On the night
of 26-27 March 1996, the seven brothers of Tibhirine were
kidnapped. The kidnappers, the senders of whom remain unknown, were looking for
seven monks.
In reality, that
night, there were nine monks: Bruno, who had arrived from Fes for the election
of the prior, and Paul, who had come the previous evening from Savoy after a
visit to his family, were the other two. Both were taken.
Two monks escaped
capture: Amédée and Jean-Pierre, whom the Providence of God held
back in order to give continuity and witness to the love of their brothers.
Seventeen years later the mystery has still not been solved: every so often a
flash of light, real or only apparent, seems to throw light into the shadows
that conceal the crime, leading to useless and suspicious tempests in the mass
media. Why were they kidnapped? By whom?Why were they not killed
immediately and why were they held hostage for a period of time unknown to us?
How, when, why, was it then decided to kill them? What is hidden behind the
silence or the lies of the possible murderers?
But their sacrifice
was not in vain: they were faithful to God, to the Church of Algeria and to
their vow of staying until the end; they chose to remain and to share the fate
of a sick and corrupt Algeria, helping the least, the poor and the sick, in the
hope of a more limpid and fraternal future; they loved unto the last sign, like
Christ, their neighbours, the humble people of the locality, the country folk
of Tibhirine, who were in danger, offering them sincere friendship.
It was granted to them to bear witness to the absolute of God and to the
possibility of loving limitlessly through the supreme, free and total gift of
their lives.
[This article is
published in Oasis n. 18. Click here to buy a copy of this issue of Oasis
and here to subscribe to the journal]
Notes
[1] Quoted in Guido Dotti
(ed.) Più forti dell’odio, gli scritti dei monaci trappisti
di Tibhirine (Piemme, Casale Monferrato, 1997), pp. 80-81.
[2] Christian
de Chergé, Address at the Journées Romaines, September 1989,
Bulletin n. 73 (1990/1) of the Pontifical Council for Non-Christians,
quoted in Più forti dell’odio, p. 38.
[4] Cf.
Jean-Pierre Schumacher, ‘I sette fratelli di Tibhirine’, in Testimoni
cistercensi del nostro tempo (Trappiste di Vitorchiano, 2006).
[5]Christian
de Chergé, L’invincible espérance(Bayard/Centurion, Paris, 1997),
p. 314.
[6] Il
soffio del dono, Diario di Fr. Christophe, monaco di Tibhirine (Ed.
Messaggero, Padua, 2001), p. 34.
[8] Original
in the archives of the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of Aiguebelle (France).
[9] Luc
Dochier, ‘Stralci delle lettere di Fra Luc, monaco trappista di Thibirine’ Rivista
Cistercense, 23 (2006), pp. 327-352.
[10] Cf. Jean-Marie Guénois, ‘Jean-Pierre, le dernier moine de
Tibhirine témoigne’, Le Figaro Magazine, 04/02/2011.
