Follow-up to my previous post:
More background on Cardinal Lustiger that might prove helpful in understanding the controversy with l'Abb‚ Pierre....
REUTER INFORMATION SERVICE - Wednesday 18 September 1996
Jewish-born cardinal is Pope's key man in France
Copyright ¸ 1996 Nando.net
Copyright ¸ 1996 Reuter Information Service
PARIS (Sep 18, 1996 08:53 a.m. EDT) - France's top Roman Catholic was born a Jew. His mother was arrested by the Nazis and died in the Auschwitz extermination camp. That helped make him an outspoken campaigner against racism and injustice.
Pope John Paul's visit to France from Thursday will cast a spotlight on Jean-Marie Lustiger, 70, the cardinal-archbishop of Paris, tipped by some Vatican watchers as an outside contender to succeed the ailing Pontiff.
A personal friend of the Polish Pope, the Paris-born son of Polish refugees converted to Christianity while he was hidden in Catholic boarding schools during the 1940-44 German occupation.
At a school in Orleans, a classmate denounced him to the Nazis and he had to flee and hide in yet another Catholic
institution in Toulouse.
The papal visit finds him, typically, embroiled in a public dispute with far-right anti-immigration crusader Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose espousal of racial inequality Lustiger this week branded "a resurgence of the most cynical paganism."
"We have known for 50 years that the theory of racial inequality can be deadly... It leads to horrors," he said.
Lustiger's behaviour when Algerian Islamic guerrillas kidnapped and killed seven French Trappist monks earlier
this year drew some criticism.
In a dramatic gesture, he snuffed out seven candles in their memory at Notre-Dame cathedral live on the television news -- before their deaths had been officially confirmed.
The cardinal also demanded that Moslem leaders dissociate themselves from the murder, which some saw as lumping them together with the Algerian extremists.
Ordained in 1954, Lustiger rose rapidly through the Church hierarchy, serving as chaplain of the Sorbonne University for 15 years. As a parish priest, he became famous for hard-hitting sermons which were published as a book and recorded on tapes.
In 1979, Lustiger was named bishop of Orleans, where his former Sorbonne parishioners often came to hear him preach.
"Without ever playing politics, the Church can and must play its role, which is spiritual," he told Le Figaro newspaper in 1982. "But the spiritual, at its best, is concrete."
In 1981, Pope John Paul appointed Lustiger archbishop of Paris because they were both "modern traditionalists" and knew each other well.
His appointment to succeed Cardinal Francois Marty was the highest ever for a convert. Lustiger's background was a reminder of bitter post-war controversy over Jewish children hidden and saved by Christian families but converted in the process.
When he took office, the French Church was dogged by a profound split between conservative older worshippers and young priests, backed by the Church leadership, who believed Catholicism should take a crusading role in social reform.
Like the Pope, Lustiger opposed both ultra-traditionalists and the openly Marxist-leaning "New Left."
An intransigent supporter of papal doctrine, he has fought to revive enthusiasm in the Church, which has been suffering from dwindling membership, fewer candidates for the priesthood, and the closing of seminaries.
Lustiger has taken a vigorous stand on social issues, advocating the right to work and condemning the exclusion of
immigrants.
In 1994, he angered police by asking the Vatican to beatify Jacques Fesch, the guillotined murderer of a policeman, who converted to Catholicism and became a mystic while in prison. The archbishop said Fesch's beatification would give hope to those who felt their lives had been hopelessly wasted.
Extracted from:
christusrex.org |
