Joy out of the Brother's death

We were all shocked when we received the news that last Tuesday evening Brother Roger Schutz, founder of the Taizé community and one of the world's leading ecumenical figures, was murdered. He had led so many people to Christ. Hundreds of young men and women from Malta were among the hundreds of thousands if not millions who visited the community and lived with its members in their quest for the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Brother Roger, 90, was leading the evening prayers as he always did. There were some 2,500 people praying with him. Suddenly, a 36-year-old Romanian woman rushed onto him and stabbed him three times in his neck. Brother Roger died soon afterwards. The authorities said that she showed signs of mental instability.

Brother Roger, a minister of the Swiss Reformed Church, was born on May 12, 1915, in Jura, Switzerland. He left his country during World War II and went to France, his mother's country, and settled in the town of Taizé.

The son of a Protestant pastor, Brother Roger was an invalid for years, suffering from tuberculosis. During that long illness, the call had taken shape in him to create a community where simplicity and kind-heartedness would be lived out as essential Gospel realities.

He founded the Taizé community in 1940 with three companions. It grew to eventually include more than 100 Anglicans, Lutherans, evangelicals and Catholics from over 20 countries.

After first arriving in Taizé, the group asked the local Catholic bishop for permission to use the village church. It was such an unusual request that the bishop referred it to the Papal Nuncio in Paris, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII. The archbishop gave his consent and later became a friend of the fledgling community.

Some 20 years later, with tens of thousands of young people coming to Taizé annually, the community built the much bigger Church of the Reconciliation.

All things being equal, Brother Roger should not have been in Taizé on that day. He should have been in Cologne for the celebration of World Youth Day. He was a regular participant. This year he could not go because of his ill health. He had sent a letter to the Pope informing him of this.

A visibly shocked Benedict XVI read from this letter during his audience last Wednesday. He wrote to the Pope to tell him: "We are in communion with you and with those gathered in Cologne... our community of Taizé wants to walk in communion with the Holy Father"

Together with Benedict XVI we say that "in this moment of sadness, we can only entrust to the Lord's goodness the soul of his faithful servant. We know that from sadness will be reborn joy."