Saint of the Day: Bl. Christian de Chergé and Companions

Monks martyred in Algeria

Fratel Christian Fratel Christian aveva un'intelligenza duplicata da una mistica della relazione. Ha saputo maturare mediante lo studio – al ritmo dei suoi fratelli coi quali s'era impegnato a vivere da monaco – e mediante l'Algeria per la quale aveva scelto di dare la sua vita. La sua vita di preghiera, nutrita alla mensa della tradizione cristiana e di quella musulmana, ha ispirato una teologia dell'incontro profetico per la vita della Chiesa.

Monk and Martyrs (d. 1996)

Their story

+ This group of martyrs includes seven Trappist monks from the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas in Algeria, who were killed on May 21, 1996.

+ Trappist monks Slovenia and France established the monastery of Our Lady of Atlas (named for the Atlas Mountain range) near Tibhirine in 1935. After Algeria achieved independence as a nation, the monastery’s lands were nationalized and the monks worked with the local villagers to establish an agricultural cooperative, farming the lands together.

+ When the Algerian Civil war broke out in 1996, the monks chose to stay in their abbey out of solidarity with the local Muslim community, who had nowhere to flee.

+ Early on the morning of March 27, armed soldiers broke into the abbey and kidnapped seven of the monks. On April 18, the “Armed Islamic Group” (GIA), who had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, offered the monks in exchange for a former GIA leader who had been arrested earlier.

+ On May 23, the GIA released a communique reporting that the monks had been executed on May 21. Ten days later, the Algerian government announced that the heads of the monks had been discovered, but their bodies have never been found. A funeral Mass was celebrated on June 2 in the Catholic of Ntore-Dame d’Afrique in Algiers.

+ The martyred monks of Our Lady of Atlas are:

Blessed Christian de Chergé
Blessed Luc Dochier
Blessed Christophe Lebreton
Blessed Michel Fleury
Blessed Bruno Lemarchand
Blessed Célestin Ringeard
Blessed Paul Favre-Miville

+ Blessed Christian and his companions were beatified with 12 other martyrs of Algeria in 2018. The story of the Monks of Tibhirine was memorialized in the film “Of Gods and Men.”

For prayer and reflection

“We have to be witnesses of Emmanuel, that is, of the 'God with.' There is a presence of ‘God among men’ that we owe assume, us. It is in this perspective that we understand our vocation to be a fraternal presence of men and women who share the life of Muslims, Algerians, in the prayer, silence and friendship.”—Blessed Christian de Chergé

Prayer

Lord our God,

who gave to Blessed Christian de Chergé and to his fellow martyrs, the grace to share in the passion of Christ by being faithful to the gospel unto death; Grant us, through their intercession,

to be ardent witnesses of forgiveness and peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(Unofficial translation of the Collect for the Optional Memorial of Blessed Christian de Chergé and Companions from the Cistercian Sanctoral)

Saint profiles prepared by Brother Silas Henderson, S.D.S.