TAIZE, France (ABP) — The legendary founder of a monastic community that united Christians from Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic and evangelical traditions was stabbed to death during a prayer service Aug. 16.
Brother Roger, leader of the Taizé Community in the French region of Burgundy, was 90. According to a statement on the group's website, he was attacked by a woman who was “probably mentally disturbed.” She was in a crowd of about 2,500 attending evening prayers in the monastery's Church of Reconciliation.
The monks, including Brother Roger, regularly worship in a central rectangular area of the sanctuary separated from other worshipers only by a low hedge, which the knife-wielding woman reportedly crossed before she slit Brother Roger's throat.
News reports said he died a few moments later, and that the suspect was identified as a 36-year-old Romanian woman who had been trying to get in contact with the monk. She is in custody, and French officials have charged her and ordered that she receive a psychiatric evaluation.
Brother Roger was born Roger Schutz in 1915, in the small town of Provence, Switzerland. His father was a Swiss Reformed pastor and his mother was a French Protestant.
His father encouraged the mystical side of his son's faith. As World War II was getting underway in 1940, the younger Schutz rode across the French border on a bicycle and chose the town of Taizé to establish a community designed to foster peace and reconciliation.
Brother Roger said he chose the location of the monastery to express solidarity with the French, who at the time were subject to Nazi rule. Due to his activities during that time — which included sheltering Jews in Taizé — German officials expelled him from France for a time. He sought refuge in his home country.
After the war, he returned to Taizé, and the monastic community gained in notoriety. Its message of peace and reconciliation especially became popular with young people beginning in the 1960s. While it only has about 100 monks from 25 different nations, the community regularly attracts 100,000 pilgrims a year who come to Taizé to meditate, pray and learn. During the summer, the weekly retreat crowds can number 6,000, mostly young adults who camp out in the tiny French town.
The Taizé monks' distinctive worship style — mostly original, meditative songs sung in repetitive fashion in many languages and reflecting many Christian traditions — has spread around the world. An open-air service in Paris in 2003 drew 80,000 people. Many American churches, including some Baptists, use Taizé style for contemplative worship services.
Shortly after Brother Roger's death, the monastery announced that his hand-picked successor, 51-year-old Brother Alois, had assumed duties as the leader of the community.
Worldwide, a variety of Christian leaders expressed shock and sympathy for the Taizé monks.
Pope Benedict XVI, during his weekly address at his summer villa south of Rome Aug. 17, noted that he had only the day before received a “very moving and very friendly” letter from Brother Roger about the Catholic Church's World Youth Day. The event was being held Aug. 18 in Cologne, Germany. Brother Roger, who had been a longtime supporter of the event, had written the pontiff to say he regretted that his health would not allow him to attend, according to Catholic News Service.
Benedict told his audience, “Brother Roger is in the hands of eternal goodness and eternal love, and has arrived at eternal joy.”
Bishop William Skylstad of the Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Wash., head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote to Brother Alois to express the American Catholic Church's sympathy.
“We assure you and the community of our profoundest sentiments as we share in your suffering and loss,” he wrote. “One with Brother Roger and the community in a firm faith in the Resurrection, we recommit ourselves to the communion to which he bore witness in life and death.”
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England, said that Brother Roger's death was an “indescribable shock.” He added, “the shock and trauma for the community at Taizé will be heavy — and it will be for all the young people who witnessed this event. All of them are in our prayers.”