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Fez – Monk Jean-Pierre Schumacher, the last survivor of the Tibhirine community, died on November 21 in Midelt, Morocco, at the age of 97.
Schumacher was born into a Catholic working-class family of six children in 1924 Lorraine, France.
Marist monks trained Schumacher to become a monk in 1953. Serving at the monastery of Timadeuc in England, Schumacher went to reinforce the community of Tibhirine, in the Algerian Atlas, in 1964. He joined the Tibhirine brotherhood with two other monks, at the request of Cardinal Duval, then archbishop of Algiers.
In the wake of a profound ideological rivalry in Algeria in the 1990s, a civil war broke out in the country after the army and generals in the Algerian government cancelled the 1992 legislative elections to prevent a potential victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
The government’s move exacerbated the country’s political divides, with the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) vowing to target foreigners living in Algeria in retaliation for what it saw as a sabotaged election to maintain the foreign-backed government in power.
Schumacher was one of two brothers from the Tibhirine community who managed to escape a terrorist raid that targeted their monastery in 1996. Since the death of Brother Amedee Noto in 2008, Schumacher was the last survivor of the Tibhirine community.
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In the midst of the Algerian civil war, seven French Trappist monks refused to leave their monastery in Tibhirine.
Approximately twenty armed men kidnapped the clerks on the night of March 26-27, 1996. The head of the GIA, Djamel Zitouni, claimed to kidnap the monks on April 26, threatening to behead them.
Two months later, on May 23, 1996, the GIA claimed responsibility for the assassination of the seven monks two days earlier. On May 30, seven heads were discovered on a road near Medea, but their bodies have never been found.
But the death of the monks has been shrouded in mystery, despite the GIA’s claim that it was responsible.
“One doesn’t know,” Schumacher is reported to have said of the circumstances in which his brothers were killed. “It’s a mystery that has not been cleared up.”
After establishing their community at the Notre Dame de L’Atlas Monastery in the town of Midelt in the Moroccan Atlas, the Trappist monks continued what they see as the essence of their mission: reconciliation and interfaith dialogue.
“The people are happy that we’re here to show that Christians and Muslims can live together,” Schumacher once said of the rapport between the Notre Dame de L’Atlas Monastery and locals in the Moroccan Atlas town.
