An experience I would wish for many is
one day to find oneself away from home.
Not necessarily out of one's own country
but at least outside familiar territory, outside your bubble,
and immersed in a completely different world.
And in that world to experience the condition of foreigner.
It is then view of come to have a different outlook on foreigners.
Bishop Pierre Claverie challenges us through his message.
His life and death shine a light
on the essential question of meeting with that "other" who is so different.
He writes: "more and more everywhere,
men of all races, all cultures
and all religions are called to live together.
And where human groups coexist without communication,
violence is near:
misunderstandings develop in the fertile ground of ignorance
and of scorn for the other.
Therefore, it is urgent to work towards making possible meeting
in respect and confidence".
Pierre Claverie was born on the eighth of May 1938 in Algiers,
in the Bab-el-Oued district,
to a French family in Algeria for four generations.
The unity of his family brought him human and spiritual balance.
He inherited his mother's love of life
and his father's determined character.
For nearly forty years, with astonishing regularity,
and in spite of great responsibilities,
he kept up a weekly correspondence with his family,
sharing with them the details of his life
his reactions to events,
but also his faith, his prayer, his religious life.
Having become a Dominican and been ordained bishop of Oran,
he was assassinated in 1996.
Mohamed Bouchikhi, a young Muslim friend,
who had come to meet him at the airport, died with him.
Inspired by this friendship,
the Dominican brother Adrien Candiard
wrote a play "Pierre and Mohamed",
a monologue in which the actor plays turnabout the two characters.
Using texts and sermons by Bishop Claverie
and inventing speech for Mohamed,
this play which has been performed more than 800 times bears homage
to Pierre Claverie's friendship for Muslims, for Algerians.
A friendship which went the full length.
He grew up in that Algeria, he the little French boy,
and I don't understand how he could have loved it.
I don't understand how he can love it,
when he sees it like that, today.
How he can love it enough not to leave it,
not to go back to France?
How can you love a sick country
that suffers and devours itself?
For me, that is the mystery of Pierre.
Bishop Pierre Claverie, a friend to the Algerians
Perhaps because I did not know the others
or that I denied their existence,
one day they jumped in front of me
and affirmed their existence.
The appearance of others,
the recognition of them,
the adjusting to them,
became, for me, obsession.
That was probably the origin of my religious vocation.
Otherness is the great question of his life finally,
since for the first seventeen years of his youth,
he lived beside the other without seeing him:
the Muslim other, the Algerian other.
He began to evolve when towards the age of eighteen,
he leaves Algiers for university studies in France, in Grenoble.
This departure from Algeria is for him a kind of injury,
he loses his place of origin,
that warm Mediterranean.
He arrives in Grenoble, he says:
"It rains all the time here".
And then, most importantly, he discovers a politically conscious university
where his ignorance about colonial reality is shaken by young students,
or even professors, with political positions.
This will bring him to an interior path
where are woven at the same time his religious vocation
and his human vocation of personal opening.
Having entered the Dominican order
and been ordained priest, he agreed to return to Algeria
when most of the Europeans
established on Algerian territory for over 150 years
had to leave.
Almost a million of those now called "pieds-noirs" (black feet)
cross the Mediterranean in conditions which are often difficult.
Independence was granted to Algeria in 1962
after 4 years of struggle between the FLN, National Liberation Front,
and the French army.
A struggle which left many dead
and involved attacks, torture and massacres
in both Algeria and France.
The Church of Algeria also experience upheaval:
the churches were empty almost overnight.
Pierre Claverie was present in Algeria
and endured this period of great change.
He is very close to Bishop Teissier who is already bishop of Oran.
And with Henri Teissier and others,
he will accomplish his work as a theologian
accompanying the reflection of a Church
which must find sense in its presence
among a people principally Muslim.
If it is not a question of proselytism:
"I am here to make you change", what does one say?
There is a whole reflection to be made
on friendship, witness, companionship, being with.
He entered fully into the project of our Church,
with Cardinal Duval, who set us in that direction,
and of Vatican II,
to be a Church reaching out in a society, in society.
I think the Church in Algeria
is marked by that condition of minority identity.
All Christians together, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals,
if we are 30,000 out of 40 million inhabitants it is the maximum.
Pierre Claverie learned Arabic with Lebanese sisters of the Holy Hearts.
He studied Islam
and creates links of friendship with many Algerian Muslims.
Made director of the centre for diocesan studies, les Glycines, in 1973 in Algiers,
he will taught Arabic to Algerians.
He was ordained bishop of Oran in 1981
following Bishop Teissier.
In spite of all his responsibility,
he wished to remain a religious
and did not give up his ministry of Dominican preaching.
He spent his vacations preaching retreats
and, each month, wrote the editorial in the bulletin of the diocese of Oran,
taking an active part in the social and political life of Algeria.
Where he was once more quite creative
was in that, of course, our churches were empty,
we no longer needed our presbyteries,
and so he said "But that is wonderful!
We can turn them into platforms for service and meetings".
That was his expression: platforms for service and meetings.
That is to say instead of whining about the fact that we were not very numerous,
we turned it around and tried to be positive.
He always told us:
the first step is the hardest.
The words I would like to keep: get out of yourself.
He said to us: go out, we must get out of ourselves.
Have an open door then go beyond self.
His message was immediately a sign
to the intellectuals of Oran
that they had there not only
a bishop in charge of the Christian community of Western Algeria
but a man who reflected on Algerian society,
on the evolution of the world.
A man of faith who was capable of illuminating that reflection
not only by his Christian identity
but also by the experience of the arabo-muslim world.
Through that experience caused by the isolation,
then the crisis and the emerging of the individual,
I acquired the personal conviction
that humanity can exist only in the plural.
The moment we pretend to possess the truth
or to speak in the name of humanity,
in the Catholic Church, we have had sad experience of that in our history,
we fall into totalitarianism and exclusion.
No one possesses the truth.
Everyone seeks it.
One does not possess God.
One does not possess the truth.
And I need,
I need the truth of others.
He is firm in his convictions, he is a Christian,
he is a bishop, he is a theologian,
he believes that Christ gives him full access to God.
But what he wants to say is that our understanding
is still on the road
and while we are on the road
it might be worth while to look at others along the road.
What is interesting is that he shows
that a Muslim on the road near him
also contributes things to his knowledge of God.
When I see the history of salvation,
when I see God's pedagogy in accompanying his people,
it is never all or nothing.
It is never just a yes or a no.
It is never binary logic.
It is always an accompaniment,
it is always a process,
including Christ's companionship with his disciples.
It was not at the very beginning that he asked them:
"Do you recognize me as the Messiah?
Then you are my disciples".
He called them and bit by bit,
he asked them to recognize him.
He led them to recognize him as Messiah.
And so, this accompaniment can turn into friendship,
brotherhood, mutual questioning,
bringing me also as a Christian
to see how to deepen my grounding in Christ.
The responsibility of Christians, to my mind,
is to make their faith audible
by hearing the questions put forth by Islam and Muslims,
undoing preconceived ideas
and making possible a common ground,
at least at the human level, in this opening towards God.
The time for dialogue cannot yet begin,
he told me:
for before the time for dialogue
there must be time for friendship.
Friendship
Friendship which makes possible real talk,
talk that listens,
talk that does not deny the other by trying to convince him,
that is what he came to live in Algeria.
It is now and urgent.
In the sense that, as always,
relations between Christians and Muslims are conflictual,
from the beginning of their history.
In my opinion we must face up to history
and accept the difficulties we have
to understand, get along with and live together.
Nevertheless,
because the difficulties have increased in recent years,
it is urgent for men and women of good will to devote themselves
perhaps not to an Islamo-Christian dialogue
in the sense that such a dialogue would deal primarily with doctrine
and understanding of texts
or of the contents of the faith of one or the other
but a renewed encounter,
an attempt at peaceful encounter.
That is what we are trying to live there,
it is in part the mission of our Church.
Pierre Claverie did not have an idealistic vision of Islam,
unlike Islamologists who look at it from afar.
He liked to say, just as I and others do:
"We are not meeting Islam, we are meeting Muslims".
This is very important.
Islam is something abstract, but there are Muslims.
Moreover, the Second Vatican Council,
in its declaration "Nostra Aetate",
does not speak of Islam, it speaks of Muslims.
If we truly believe that God has given himself,
revealed himself, spoken, and that he has begun a relationship
with what it is to be really human in the real world,
then he calls his Church to do the same thing.
Paul VI in his encyclical "Ecclesiam Suam"
said also like this.
He says that "the Church makes conversation with the world".
It is her nature, her vocation,
she is called to make conversation,
that is to say to have a dialogue.
This is what defines the Christian reality
because we are inhabited by the Word of God.
The Word of God is nothing other than this intimate dialogue with God
made possible by the Spirit and the breath.
Between 1991 and 2002, Algeria went through a "black decade".
The electoral process was blocked by the military
in order to prevent Islamists from coming to power,
who had nevertheless won a large majority.
The islamists decided to engage in an armed struggle.
A period of assassinations and violence began,
particularly targetting at those who represented civic life:
the police, magistrates, moderate imams, politicians,
teachers, journalists, singers,
and in a second period of time, foreigners.
The traditional Islam of Algeria is an Islam of brotherhood and devotion.
But the Arabization which took place after independence
by professors who came from the Middle East,
spread radical islamic ideas.
These ideas found favourable ground
because of the corruption of politicians and because of poverty,
and islamism made its way into mosques and into hearts.
It's a geopolitical crisis, a crisis of identity.
It's a religious crisis, a regional crisis
and also a crisis of the muslim religion which was also meeting modernity in a different way.
And like all crises,
it led to a change, a transformation,
like the crisis of adolescence which leads to adulthood,
or it could lead to a crisis of tension:
we go backwards because we fear change
we fear openness.
From 1991-92
and the increase in lslamist violence,
the focus was a little bit different.
It was "The other has an identity that I don't understand,
and I need to know how to behave in the face of this resistance"
I couldn't propose to the Muslim community
that they followed the path of interior and spiritual renewal
that the Christian community had been in the process of since Vatican II
and even for the last 50 years.
This religious tradition had its own rhythms.
Since the beginning of the Algerian drama,
I have often been asked:
What are you doing there?
Why do you stay?
Shake the dust off your sandals!
Go home!
Home?
Where is our home?
We are here because of our crucified Messiah.
Because of nothing else and nobody else!
We are there,
like being at the bedside of a friend,
of a sick brother,
in silence,
holding his hand,
wiping his forehead.
Because of Jesus, because it is him who is suffering over there,
in this violence
that spares no one,
crucified again in the flesh of thousands innocents.
Where would the Church of Jesus Christ be
if not there?
I believe the Church is dying
from not being close enough
to the cross of her Lord.
I believe that Jesus put himself right on the fracture lines of humanity.
Where there was rejection, intolerance and brokenness.
Whether it is fracture lines within people:
those who are ill, in despair, alone, rejected,
or whether it is fractures between groups of people
we could take the pharisee and the publican as an example;
or jews and gentiles,
or believers and non-believers.
So Jesus put himself there
and did little else other than to stand there.
This is the last image that Jesus gave us in his life
an image of a man torn apart.
One hand on the inside and one hand with the excluded.
He put his disciples onto these same fracture lines
with the same mission of healing and reconciliation.
The church accomplishes its vocation and its mission
when it is present in that brokenness
which crucifies humanity in its flesh and in its unity.
Why stay here?
And Pierre replied
"Even for a single life of someone like Mohamed,
it is worth risking one's life"
He knew very well that he was going to die.
How could the storm of fire which fell on Algeria
and didn't even spare the monks lost in the mountains,
pass by without carrying with it this strong voice
which spoke on the radio
and even on the television?
If Pierre has to die,
allow me to be with him at that moment.
It would be too sad if Pierre,
who loved friendship so much
did not have a friend by his side
to accompany him
at the hour of his death.
The death of Monseigneur Claverie
and of my son Mohamed
was a sign of peace,
of peace and friendship.
Their blood, their flesh
was mingled and shredded.
They were mixed together,
buried together.
It is a sign from God that we are all children of God,
Christians and Muslims.
This is the sign of peace and friendship.
On 1st August 1996,
Mohamed Bouchikhi accompanied his friend
inside the bishop's palace.
A bomb was waiting for them.
At Bishop Pierre Claverie's burial,
many muslims came to pay him hommage.
He was the last
of the 19 religious assassinated in Algeria,
among 150,000 dead, victims of the black decade.
The church which went through this drama with the algerians
became at that very moment
the «Algerian Church»
Here are the words of this arabic song:
We testify that there is no existence except through love
We testify that there is no life other than in love
We testify that there is no man except for love
We testify that there is no God but Love
He was assassinated.
It was terrible.
They wanted to shut him up,
but he speaks even more now.
It seems to me absolutely essential
that in France and everywhere that it is possible,
Christians and Muslims should build relationships of trust and confidence, of friendship
and try to come to a mutual understanding
so that where that is not possible,
we can at least look to the outside,
and again hope that a future between christians and muslims will be
open.
This is what a friend, Oum el Kheir, told us
about the presence of the church with other believers :
« Be the little stone
which prevents the door of Islam from closing on itself »
Personally I believe very much in the importance of meeting.
I think that it is with people
that we can understand things.
We can read books, but the most important thing
is to meet at home and elsewhere.
This is the way Europe has to go
and I think that if it doesn't stay as an open Europe,
a Europe that has values,
it too will be forced to shut itself inside a wall,
I mean what it is doing at the moment,
and obviously that will lead to violence.
The only alternative to violence is to encounter one another.
Everyone should have at least one muslim friend.
Because when you have a muslim friend,
you have a key to enter
into a reality that you don't understand,
which seems strange, possibly threatening.
So I think we should not be afraid but dare to form friendships.
From the book of Isaiah, chapter 50, verses 4 and 5
The Sovereign Lord
has given me an instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like a disciple.
The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears,
and I have not been rebellious, I have not drawn back.
Lord you came to meet us when we were still far off.
Give us the grace of encountering others who are different from us
and who might make us afraid.
Come and disarm in us and in the other, all violence, closeness, contempt and hatred.
We pray for the Algerian Church,
that it might continue to be a sign of your love for all.
We entrust to you the Chemin Neuf Community
and its presence in the monastery of Tibhirine.
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