Brother Roger

Brother Roger
Frère Roger
Brother Roger at prayer.
Religion Reformed Christianity
Order Taizé Community, founder
Other names Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche
Personal
Nationality Swiss
Born (1915-05-12)May 12, 1915
Provence, Vaud, Switzerland
Died August 16, 2005(2005-08-16) (aged 90)
Taizé, Saône-et-Loire, France

Roger Schütz, popularly known as Brother Roger (French: Frère Roger; Provence, Switzerland, May 12, 1915 – Taizé, August 16, 2005), was a Swiss Christian leader and monastic. In 1940 Schütz founded the Taizé Community, an ecumenical monastic community in Burgundy, France. He served as the community's first prior until his murder in 2005. Towards the end of his life the Taizé Community was attracting international attention, welcoming thousands of young pilgrims every week, which it has continued to do after his death.

Background

Brother Roger at prayer, 2003.

He was born Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche, the ninth and youngest child of Karl Ulrich Schütz, a Protestant pastor from Bachs in the Zürcher Unterland in Switzerland, and his wife, Amélie Henriette Marsauche, a Huguenot from Burgundy, France.

From 1937 to 1940, Schütz-Marsauche studied Reformed theology in Strasbourg and Lausanne, where he was a leader in the Swiss Student Christian Movement, part of the World Student Christian Federation. Falling ill with tuberculosis, during his convalescence he began to feel drawn to a monastic way of life.[1]

In 1940, at the start of World War II, Schütz-Marsauche felt called to serve those suffering from the conflict, as his maternal grandmother had done during World War I. He rode a bicycle from Geneva to Taizé, a small town near Mâcon, about 390 kilometres (240 mi) southeast of Paris. The town was then located within unoccupied France, just beyond the line of demarcation from the zone occupied by German troops. He bought an empty house, where for two years he and his sister, Genevieve, hid refugees, both Christian and Jewish, before being forced to leave Taizé, after being tipped off that the Gestapo had become aware of their activities. In 1944, he returned to Taizé to found the Community, initially a small quasi-monastic community of men living together in poverty and obedience, open to all Christians.[1]

Since the late 1950s, many thousands of young adults from many countries have found their way to Taizé to take part in weekly meetings of prayer and reflection. In addition, Taizé brothers make visits and lead meetings, large and small, in Africa, North and South America, Asia, and in Europe, as part of a “pilgrimage of trust on earth”.

The spiritual leader always kept a low profile, rarely giving interviews and refusing to permit any "cult" to grow up around himself. Prior to his death, Brother Roger was due to give up his community functions because of his advanced age and ill-health which had seen him suffer from fatigue and often use a wheelchair.

Brother Roger was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education in 1988 and wrote many books on prayer and reflection, asking young people to be confident in God and committed to their local church community and to humanity. He also wrote books about Christian spirituality and prayer, some together with Mother Teresa with whom he shared a cordial friendship.

Ecumenical ideals

Brother Roger with Catholic and Protestant clergy, leaving an ecumenical service in St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, c. 1975

All his life, Roger devoted himself to reconciling the different Christian churches. He especially addressed Christian youth. Part of his appeal may have been his dislike of formal preaching, while encouraging a spiritual quest as a common endeavor. During a Taizé gathering in Paris in 1995, he spoke to more than 100,000 young people who were sitting on the floor of an exhibition hall. "We have come here to search", he said, "or to go on searching through silence and prayer, to get in touch with our inner life. Christ always said, Do not worry, give yourself."[2]

From a Protestant background, Brother Roger undertook a step that was without precedent since the Reformation: entering progressively into a full communion with the faith of the Catholic Church without a “conversion” that would imply a break with his origins. In 1980, during a European Meeting in Rome, he said in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the presence of Pope John Paul II:

I have found my own identity as a Christian by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking fellowship with anyone.[3]

Brother Roger received the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist at the Catholic Mass celebrated every morning in his monastery, and he received the sacrament from both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, seemingly in contravention of canonical prohibitions on administering the sacrament to those not in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. According to Cardinal Walter Kasper, this was accomplished as though there was a tacit understanding between Brother Roger and the Catholic Church "crossing certain confessional" and canonical barriers through what Brother Roger called a gradual enrichment of his faith with the foundations of the Catholic Church including "the ministry of unity exercised by the bishop of Rome."[3]

In 2004 the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, awarded Brother Roger the Cross of St Augustine in recognition of his contribution to ecumenism. This is an Anglican given to a very small number of people each year for their contribution to either the Anglican Communion or ecumenism.[4]

Death

Wikinews has related news: Taizé ecumenical community founder Frère Roger assassinated
Brother Roger's grave in Taizé

Brother Roger was stabbed to death during the evening prayer service in Taizé on August 16, 2005, by a young Romanian woman named Luminița Ruxandra Solcan who was later deemed mentally ill.[5] He was stabbed several times and, though one of the brothers carried him from the church, he died shortly afterward. The assailant was immediately apprehended by members of the congregation and was placed in police custody.

The funeral took place on August 23, 2005. Horst Köhler, the President of Germany, and Nicolas Sarkozy, at that time Minister of the Interior of France, were in attendance. Brother Roger's community and friends attended the liturgy in the vast monastery church at Taizé, while thousands more followed it on a huge screen in fields outside the church. Brother Roger's simple wooden coffin, a wooden icon lying upon it, was carried into the church by members of the community. In a highly unusual move, the funeral was presided over by a Catholic cardinal, Walter Kasper, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who celebrated the Mass with four priest-brothers of Taizé concelebrating. In his homily he said, "Yes, the springtime of ecumenism has flowered on the hill of Taizé."[6] In reference to Brother Roger's concern for social justice, Cardinal Kasper said "Every form of injustice or neglect made him very sad."[6] Brother Roger's successor, Brother Alois Löser, prayed for forgiveness: "With Christ on the cross we say to you, Father, forgive her, she does not know what she did."[6]

Successor

In 1998, Brother Roger had designated Brother Alois, a German who had originally come to Taizé as a youth and became one of the brothers, as his successor. This was confirmed by the community and in January 2005, it was announced that Alois would soon be taking Roger's place as Prior of Taizé, but this had not yet occurred at the time of Roger's death, when Alois was attending the World Youth Day celebration in Cologne, Germany. He was installed as prior shortly thereafter.

Publications

Editions, listed alphabetically, as found in the Library of Congress Catalog shortly after his death:

Awards and honours

References

  1. 1 2 "The beginnings". Taizé.
  2. ↑ Simons, Marlise (August 18, 2005). "Brother Roger, 90, Dies; Ecumenical Leader". International New York Times. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Magister, Sandro (August 25, 2008). "Was the Founder of Taizé Protestant, or Catholic? A Cardinal Solves the Riddle". www.ChiesaOnline.
  4. ↑ http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2842/archbishop-to-award-cross-of-st-augustine. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  5. ↑ Taizé: non-lieu psychiatrique pour la meurtrière présumée de Frère Roger Archived July 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. 1 2 3 At His Funeral, Brother Roger Has an Ecumenical Dream Fulfilled
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