French monk witnessed the horror but thought only of reconciliation

Jean-Pierre Schumacher’s long life was filled with love for others, even after seven of his brothers were slain in the Algerian civil war.

Pope Francis bends to kiss the hand of French Catholic monk Brother Jean-Pierre Schumacher in 2019 while visiting Morocco. Schumacher was the last survivor of the 1996 massacre of Trappist monks during the Algerian civil war.

OBITUARY
Jean-Pierre Schumacher Priest. Born Buding, France, February 15, 1924. Died Morocco, November 21, aged 97.

For the last 27 years of his life Jean-Pierre Schumacher went on a daily pilgrimage of the heart: had he fallen short and been overlooked or, as was often suggested to him, had he been singled out for a greater role, one only he could fulfil?

For decades he lived peacefully in the village of Tibhirine atop a plateau of Algeria’s Atlas Mountains. “It was so beautiful,” the Trappist monk would recall he as he spoke of his time at the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas in which he was cloistered in strict observance with eight others.

Days were spent in quiet prayer, growing vegetables, teaching French and making shoes and medicines for poor locals.

It was a tradition started by a man whose road to sainthood has been unconventional. The dissolute life of Charles de Foucauld was bent back in shape by the French army and in quick succession he became a cavalry officer with an African regiment, an explorer and geographer of the Middle East, and fell under the spell of the Saharan nomads, the Taureg people. He became a priest and lived among them as a hermit. (He had wanted to start a religious order, but no one would join.) He was murdered in 1916, a French military report stating: “He died … in the manner that he wished, having always desired a violent death dealt in hatred of the Christian name.” He will be canonised by Pope Francis next May.

Schumacher was born in the north of France and, after school, trained with the Marist Brothers and was ordained by them in 1953, after which he joined the local order of Trappists. In 1964 they sent him to Algeria. The Trappists are not missionaries in the evangelical sense; they seek simple lives of faith and forbearance and to lead by gentle example.

Nonetheless, during the Algerian civil war the monks became targets as Islamist insurgents tried to overthrow the government.

In the first hours of March 27, 1996, about 20 fighters with the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) entered the basement of the abbey, kidnapping seven monks and a brother visiting from Morocco.

Schumacher, ensconced alone in the porter’s lodge on concierge duty that night, later told a reporter: “I heard noises. I thought they had come to take the medicine, as it had happened before. Then when silence returned, someone knocked on my door. I was a little scared, then I opened. It was (Father) Amedee (Noto), who told me, ‘They took our brothers away. We are all alone, you and I.’ ”

Three weeks later the GIA offered to release the monks in exchange for one of their jailed leaders. Then they sent a cassette with spoken messages from the monks to the French embassy in Algiers. But a note on May 23 said they had executed them. Their heads were found the next week.

It seemed just another abhorrent crime by particularly vicious Islamists. But 13 years later a retired French general, Francois Buchwalter – in 1996 the military attache in Algiers – claimed he had been told the monks were shot after an Algerian government helicopter gunship spotted movement at a rebel camp. It was claimed that the rebels, on realising the error, beheaded the monks and buried their bodies to hide the evidence.

A decade later that version of events was discredited in an inquiry – none of the monks had bullet wounds to the head.

Father Noto died in France, aged 88, in 2008. Schumacher, the last survivor, moved to a Trappist monastery Morocco, but his lucky escape haunted him. “Why had the Lord allowed me to stay alive?” he asked. “Was my heart not ready? Was the lamp not lit?”

The monks were warned of the danger to them posed by the Islamists. They discussed this but decided to share the risk with their Algerian hosts, among whom were many moderate imams who had been killed. “Fidelity to the appointment of prayer is the secret of our friendship with Muslims,” Schumacher said.

The slain men were beatified by Pope Francis in 2018 and the following year he travelled to Morocco to meet Schumacher. The Pope said later that Christians need not hide that in which they believe but should share their faith with respect for the faith of others.

Schumacher fell ill and on November 21 attended church, where he received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. He died moments after. His church issued a statement: “Ten minutes later, he gave his soul to the Lord. He left in peace, as he has been all his life.”