Legacy Matters

Brother Robert, Prior of Taize

Brother Robert, Prior of Taize, aged 90,  was stabbed three times in the back by a deranged woman from Romania in front of the 2500 visitors attending evening prayers at the community of Taize in the Burgundy area of France.

A shocking and violent end to a life of prayer, peace and reconciliation.

His community of Taize, founded after World War II,  became a center of pilgrimage, attracting thousands of young people drawn by the purest  Gregorian chant in the world.

From the International Herald Tribune

Brother Roger, 90, and his fellow monks, including Lutherans, Anglicans, Catholics and Orthodox Christians, built bridges among the various Christian faiths. But he above all sought to awaken spirituality among young people growing up in a secular world.

From the Telegraph, U.K.

Since 1959 thousands of young people have made their way by train, bus, car and on foot to Taizé's plain concrete church on a Burgundian hill, there to camp out in tents at Easter and throughout the summer. Taizé has been visited by three Archbishops of Canterbury, several Orthodox metropolitans, 14 Swedish Lutheran bishops and by Pope John Paul II, who compared it to "a spring of water".

Brother Robert believed in prayer and said, "Prayer is a serene force at work within human beings, stirring them up, transforming them, never allowing them to close their eyes in the face of evil, or wars, or all that threatens the weak of this world."  The Taize form of prayer that evolved consists of music made up of simple melodies repeated several times to allow it to become a prayer of the heart.

The spirituality of the Taize service is deeply moving and  has influenced Christian worship around the world.

From his  obituary in the London Times

The charisma of this frail and sensitive Swiss pastor without oratorical gifts has attracted more young people than any other religious leader in Europe, Catholic or Protestant. He linked prayer and the fight against injustice using the phrase “struggle and contemplation”. Worship three times a day is part of a life which includes a farm co-operative, a printing press and studios for painting and pottery.

A visibly moved  Pope Benedict,

in impromptu remarks during his weekly general audience Aug. 17 at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, said he had been given the sad and "terrifying" news that morning.

It was all the more shocking, the pope said, because he had received a "very moving and very friendly" letter from Brother Roger the previous day.