Bishop Pierre Claverie O.P.; 1938-1996

By Sister Irene Hartman, OP

Holy Ones of Our Time

Bishop Pierre Claverie O.P. ranks among the greats of our day in the company of Archbishop Oscar Romero and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Claverie’s mission was to work for reconciliation and peace among religions of Algeria, his native country. He is seen as the patron for dialogue of different cultures. He was named Bishop of Oran, Algeria in 1981.

Pierre Claverie was born in 1938 into a family of French settlers in Algeria, a family that had been in the country for four generations. At 20, he realized that he had been living in a “colonial bubble” because the majority of Arabs had been essentially invisible to him. Claverie came to see that his Christian upbringing had never challenged him to step out of that bubble, and see the Arabs as his “neighbors.” For the rest of his life, Claverie was determined to overcome that abyss of separates.

As a young Dominican, he studied in the famed Le Saulchoir House of Studies near Paris from 1959-1967. There he came to know the Dominican theological giants Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar. In preparation for his “Algerian vocation” as he called it, he mastered Arabic and came to understand Islamic spirituality and history. In 1967, he was missioned to Algeria, finding that most of the former French Catholic settlers had moved back to France, thus greatly reducing the Catholic population. He knew he had to articulate a new logic for the church’s presence in an Islamic society. His goal was to establish an “apostolate of friendship” always, everywhere, and with everyone. Claverie was sure that basic human solidarity would ultimately prove more powerful than theological divisions and historical resentments.

Claverie is quoted as saying, “I know enough Muslim friends who are also my brothers to think that Islam knows how to be tolerant, fraternal. Dialogue is a work to which we must return without pause. It alone lets us disarm the fanaticism, both our own and that of the other.” He shunned large scale Christian/Muslim meetings, feeling that the slogans generated glossed superficially over the deep theological and spiritual differences. He was not afraid to denounce the cowardice of those who kill in the shadows.

As bishop, Claverie tangled with the Community of Sant’Engidio, a Catholic movement known for its efforts in conflict resolution. He and some other Algerian bishops saw these efforts lending legitimacy to forces butchering anyone who stood up for a non-Islamist state. These bishops also struggled with democratic activists who were laying down their lives to resist the Islamists. Claverie’s focus was twofold: a democratic tolerant Islamic society is possible, and that it is better to build up alternatives than to tear down the opposites. He worked to foster a genuine civil society in Algeria, building libraries, rehabilitation centers for the handicapped, and centers for educating women.

Claverie realized that reconciliation is now a simple affair and he knew it came at a high price. But as the Jesus whom he followed, he never ceased to work for reconciliation. “Reconciliation requires being torn apart between irreconcilable opposites, just as it did for Jesus. What is the choice? Well, Jesus did not choose. He says, in effect, ‘I love you all,’ and He dies.”

Claverie was killed Aug. 1, 1996, just two months after the brutal beheading of seven Trappist monks in Tibhirine, Algeria. The bishop died alongside his Muslim driver and friend, Mohamed Bouchikhi, when a bomb exploded in the bishop’s residence. As the two men lay dying, their blood mingling on the floor, they were offering a metaphor for common humanity running deeper than differences of ethnicity, ideology, and creed.

The martyred bishop of Oran, Algeria, is called an artisan of the patient, often painful work of building relationships, overcoming stereotypes, and confronting painful truths with both honesty and hope. At his funeral, Algerian Muslim mourners described the bishop as “the bishop of the Muslims, too.” His cause for sainthood has recently been opened, along with 18 other martyrs of a bloody civil war that left 150,000 Algerians dead.