The last of the Tibhirine monks has joined his brothers

Jean-Pierre Schumacher, the last survivor of the Tibhirine massacre, died in Morocco this past Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King.

The 97-year-old Trappist priest was already dead when his fellow monks at Midelt Priory checked in on him after the Eucharist.

He had received the anointing of the sick earlier that morning.

Schumacher was born in 1924 in Lorraine in northeast France. He was raised in a Catholic working class family of six children and educated by the Marist Fathers.

Ordained a priest in 1953, he entered the Trappist Abbey of Notre-Dame de Timadeuc in Brittany. 

At the request of the archbishop of Algiers, he and three other monks went to Algeria in 1964 to give new life to Our Lady of Atlas Abbey in Tibhirine.

Their goal was to "build a small community in the middle of the Muslim world, living poor among the poor".

An ardent desire for dialogue with Muslims

As in any Trappist monastery, the life of the monks was one of prayer and work.

Despite their ardent desire to establish a dialogue with Muslims, the monks felt danger mounting throughout the "Black Decade" of Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s. 

But they had collectively decided to remain in their monastery, despite the threats.

During the night of March 26-27, 1996, armed men kidnapped seven of the monks. 

Father Jean-Pierre was on night duty at the monastery. He was praying on his knees next to his bed when the door handle began to creak.

"It was spinning in the void because, like every night, I had released the latch, for safety," he recounted in a book he wrote in 2012 with French journalist Nicolas Ballet.

The captors thought there were only seven monks, when in fact there were nine. They ended up killing them.

Jean-Pierre always wondered why he and another monk, Amédée, survived the massacre when the heads of their seven abducted confreres were found in a ditch not far from the abbey.

This “miracle” tormented him for the rest of his life.

"Love the brother, hate the vice"

In the end, he came to see his fate in this phrase that a Swiss nun shared with him: "There are people who are led to bear witness by the gift of their lives and others who do so through their lives." 

Jean-Pierre thus bore witness, above all, to the power of his brothers' martyrdom. 

But he confessed that he never mourned the loss of his fellow monks. 

"I am not sad, I was not sad,” he said. 

“My brothers went to the end, to the point of offering their entire being to God, without any desire for sacrifice, but in obedience to the ideal of monastic life that unites us beyond earthly life," Jean-Pierre said.

The seven murdered monks of Tibhirine were beatified in December 2018 in Oran, along with 12 other religious killed in Algeria during the "Black Decade". 

Four years after the murder of his confreres, Jean-Pierre moved to the small Trappist community in Midelt (Morocco) where he joined eight other monks.  

He was often asked about the question of forgiveness. 

"Only God can grant it if the guilty ask God," he would say.  

But then he’d add that he followed the St. Benedict’s instruction for dealing with one who has committed a serious fault – "Love the brother, hate the vice."

"The death of the saints is a seed for Christians"

Jean-Pierre's life took on a new and unexpected light in 2010 when Xavier Beauvois' successful film, Of Gods and Men, was released.

The French monk was very pleased with the feature film that tells the story of the Trappists of Tibhirine from 1993 until their abduction in 1996.

He said the film was "very faithful" to the Trappists’ message of fraternity, especially towards Muslims.

"The radiant beauty of this film reinforced my conviction that the death of my brothers was not in vain. The death of the saints is a seed of Christians," he said in his 2012 book. 

Father Jean-Pierre met with Pope Francis in 2019 during the papal visit to Morocco.

His funeral will be celebrated on November 30 at the Midelt Priory in Morocco where he died.