Father Jean-Pierre Schumacher, the last surviving monk of the Algerian Trappist monastery of Tibhirine massacre in 1996, passed away on Sunday in a monastery in central Morocco, said an official of the Christian Church in Morocco.

«He (Jean-Pierre Schumacher) passed away this morning in serenity at the monastery of Our Lady of the Atlas, in Midelt. He is a simple and fraternal man who knew that his mission was to bear witness to what he lived in Tibhirine», Father Daniel Nourissat, vicar of Saint-Pierre Cathedral in Rabat, told AFP.

The late monk, 97, will be buried in Midelt on Tuesday, added Father Nourissat.

Father Schumacher was the last survivor of the attack on seven Trappist monks from the Tibhirine monastery, kidnapped and murdered in 1996 in Algeria. 

Born in 1924 in Lorraine and raised in a Catholic working-class family of six children, the late Schumacher studied with the Marist Fathers. Ordained a priest in 1953, he entered the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Timadeuc in Brittany in 1957. 

It was at the request of the Bishop of Algiers that he left in 1964 for Tibhirine in Algeria with three other monks from Timadeuc, in order to “build a small community located in the middle of a Muslim environment, living poor among the poor”. They decided to remain in their monastery in the Atlas Mountains, living alongside the locals in harmony.

Yet in the early morning of March 27, 1996, seven of the 19 French Trappist monks in Tibhirine were kidnapped by indiscriminate terrorists during the black decade of the 1990s, the barbarism of which did not also spare 114 imams.

Weeks later, by the end of May 1996, seven decapitated heads were found on a road near the city of Medea. The deceased were buried in the cemetery at Tibhirine on June 4. The events leading up to the abduction of the monks at the Notre Dame de L'Atlas monastery in Tibhirine are the subject of the 2010 award-winning movie, Of Gods and Men.

The seven victims are: Christian de Chergé, Paul Dochier, Christophe Lebreton, Michel Fleury, Celestin Ringeard, Christian Lemarchand, and Paul Famavre-Miville, and their ages ranged from 45 to 82.

Revealing the details of the heinous tragedy, the late Schumacher said in The Spirit of Tibhirine, a book he wrote along with the journalist Nicolas Ballet (Ed. Seuil, 2012), that, during the night of March 26-27, 1996, seven monks from his monastery were kidnapped by armed men. Brother Jean-Pierre Schumacher was the night porter of the convent. He was praying kneeling beside his bed when the handle began to creak, adding that the terrorists thought that the monks were seven in number, while they were in fact nine.

Following the tragedy, Father Jean-Pierre Schumacher moved to Morocco where he became the prior of a small community of Trappist monks of the Cistercian Order in the Moroccan Atlas. “He often said that his survival was a call from God to witness, something he did all his life,” concluded Father Nourissat.

Another survivor of the tragedy, Father Amédée Noto, died in 2008. With his passing, Father Jean-Pierre had become the only surviving member of the monastery at Tibhirine. 

Pope Francis paid tribute to him during his apostolic visit to Morocco in 2019, kissing his hand in a gesture of respect and reverence.

On December 8th, 2018, the Catholic Church beatified the seven French monks and 12 other clergies killed during Algeria’s black decade as the Vatican issued the decree of their martyrdom. Former Bishop of Oran, Pierre Claverie, who was assassinated on August 1st, 1996, was also declared a martyr.

The Catholicization is the third stage of the four steps of the process of sanctifying a deceased person who is chosen by the Pope on behalf of the Catholic Church.

The ceremony, the first of its kind in a Muslim nation, was held in Oran, 400 kilometers west of the Algerian capital. The Mass and beatification rite for the six women and 13 men who sacrificed their lives for the least, the sick and the men, women, and young people of Algeria were presided over by Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes with Mohammad Aissa, then-Minister of Religious Affairs and Endowment in Algeria, in attendance.

The martyrs are intercessors and models of fraternity, coexistence, and dialogue. Their beatification in Algeria is a call for humanity to build together a world of peace and fraternity.

When asked about living with Muslims, the late Father replied: “I love my years spent in Tibhirine among the Muslim population. It is for the same reason that I am still in Morocco,” before adding while smiling: “I intend, God willing, to end my days there.”

Details on the assassination of Tibhirine monks:

According to late Father Jean-Pierre Schumacher, interviewed by the Jeune d’Afrique news website, it all started on December 24, 1996, when the monks were visited by masked men who came to seek doctor Luke, to take him in order to treat “jihadists” in the mountains of Medea. However, Father Christian, the prior and responsible for the monastery, cleverly assured them that the doctor had asthma and could not bear the trip to the mountains. Since that evening, the monks knew that the terrorists were coming back! But they decided to stay “to serve God”. 

On the orders of the Algerian army, they began to close the doors of the monastery quite early at night. Father Jean-Pierre Schumacher added: “I was the night porter of the convent. On March 27, 1996, at 1 a.m., I was praying kneeling beside the bed when the handle began to creak. I was caught by noises outside. I said to myself: “that's it, they are there!”. “I thought they were coming only to see the doctor and ask for medicine. In the courtyard, I recognized the voice of Father Christian, who asked them behind the gate: "Who is the chief?" Someone replied, "He's the boss, you have to obey him!” 

“At that moment, I felt that one should be wary. A few minutes later, I learned that the terrorists arrested the guard, Mohamed Benali, ordering him to open all doors. One of the terrorists asked him, "Are there really seven?” to which he replied with “It's as you say.” 

“Thanks to Mohamad’s response,” the Father continued, “I (Schumacher) and Father Amédée were able to escape the kidnapping. Strangely, the terrorists did not know there were nine of us (monks). Immediately, they went straight to the doctor, who was sleeping with the door open because of his asthma, then to the prior, as well as to five monks who were upstairs. The rooms where the guests of the monastery and a group of nuns were staying were not approached. As for the guard, Mohamed Benali, he managed to escape. A few moments later, the noises stopped. I thought they were gone. Suddenly, someone knocked on my door. I thought the terrorists came back. But it was Father Amédée and one of the guests of the monastery, Father Thierry Becker, who came to tell me that our brothers had disappeared.” 
The Father went on saying that “due to the curfew imposed by the Algerian army, Fathers Jean-Pierre and Amédée had to wait until 5 a.m. before going to the village’s military barracks to report the incident as the terrorists cut the phone line before leaving.”

Investigations were launched to find out the circumstances of this horrific tragedy. Two days later, the monks decided to move to the capital Algiers to reside at the diocesan house, joining other Christian communities in ganger.

“We brought from Tibhirine a 30-liter pot of red bean soup that Brother Luke had prepared for us before he was abducted. That evening, we invited everyone to eat and said: Brother Luke made you the meal!”

Later on, Father Schumacher moved to Fez, in Morocco, where the religious community of the Trappist Cistercians was located. As for Father Amédée, he preferred to stay in Algiers to continue managing the monastery remotely, for fear that he would be assassinated. 

On May 23, 1996, the terrorists announced that they had “slit the throats” of seven Trappist monks whom they had kidnapped from the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria. The heads were found on May 30, 1996.

"I was praying in our monastery in Fez," said Father Schumacher, when a brother entered and laid down on his stomach, shouting: "The fathers have been killed." “You shouldn’t be sad,” I replied. “They are our martyrs”.

The funeral of the monks took place on June 2, 1996, in Algiers. It was on this day that Jean-Pierre Schumacher learned that only the heads were found and that there was no trace of the bodies. After the ceremony, the coffins were transported by the Algerian Army to Tibhirine Monastery, where they were buried to rest in peace. 

For his part, the guard Mohamed Benali appeared as a witness in the kidnapping issue. He said, in a documentary about the assassination of French monks in Algeria, The Martyrdom of the Seven Monks of Tibhirine, that the terrorists came on March 26th, 1996 with their leader, called Abu Hareth, who had a beard and wore glasses. They called for the doctor. Benali was taken as a hostage before he managed to escape. He had been hiding all night in a neighboring forest while the terrorist group kidnapped the seven monks and left.

“When an armed terrorist group came and asked to see the Doctor, my wife woke me up. I stood up and I asked who was knocking on the door. I refused to open it,” said Benali, adding that “the masked terrorists stormed in and headed to the room where the monks were sleeping. They obliged them to go with them.”

“At that time,” he explained, “another monk wanted to enter the room as he did not know who was there. I made him a sign to not enter and run away.”

“The terrorists cut the phone line. I escaped by miracle and had to spend the night out until the terrorists left.”

Father Christian wrote a touching letter in which he said he devoted his life to God and Algeria:

 
Prior to the kidnapping, the superior of the monastery, Father Christian de Chergé, had left with his family this testament “to be opened in the event of my death.”

“If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. I ask them to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to be able to associate such a death with the many other deaths that were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other, nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a clear space which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were to be accused indiscriminately of my murder. It would be to pay too dearly for what will, perhaps, be called “the grace of martyrdom,” to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the scorn with which Algerians as a whole can be regarded. I know also the caricature of Islam which a certain kind of Islamism encourages. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideologies of the extremists. 

For me, Algeria and Islam are something different; they are a body and a soul. I have proclaimed this often enough, I believe, in the sure knowledge of what I have received in Algeria, in the respect of believing Muslims—finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church. 

My death, clearly, will appear to justify those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But these people must realize that my most avid curiosity will then be satisfied. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills—immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, delighting in the differences.

For this life given up, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything. In this “thank you,” which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my brothers and sisters and their families—the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And you also, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you also I wish this “thank you”—and this adieu—to commend you to the God whose face I see in yours.

And may we find each other, happy “good thieves,” in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen.”

(The letter was translated by the Monks of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, Leicester, England).