Jean-Pierre Schumacher facts for kids

Jean-Pierre Schumacher (15 February 1924 – 21 November 2021) was a French Trappist monk and prior. He was one of the two survivors of the Trappist community of Tibhirine.

Biography

Schumacher was born on 15 February 1924 in Buding, Moselle. He was born and raised in a Catholic family of six children. At the age of eighteen he was enlisted in the Wehrmacht and escaped being sent to the Russian front thanks to a false diagnosis of tuberculosis during the military medical examination. Schumacher studied with the Marist Fathers and was ordained a priest in 1953. In 1957, he joined the trappists and entered the Abbey of the Notre-Dame de Timadeuc. At the request of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Algiers, Schumacher was sent in 1964 to the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria alongside three other monks from Timadeuc.

On 21 May 1996, Schumacher survived the Tibhirine massacre alongside Father Amédée. The monastery was transferred to Fez to a former annex of the monastery where he was immediately appointed "superior ad nutum". On 18 September 1997, he became the successor of Christian de Chergé by election of this community, now called the Priory of Our Lady of Atlas. Four years later, in 2000, they settled permanently in Midelt in a monastery previously occupied by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters. Since then, the community has seven members of very diverse origins.

In December 2018, Fr. Jean-Pierre and the rest of the community of Our Lady went to Algeria for the beatification of his murdered companions and several other killed Christians of the Algerian civil war and he returned to the Tibhirine monastery for a final time. In 2019, Schumacher met Pope Francis, in which Pope Francis kissed his hands at a meeting, while he was visiting Morocco.

Schumacher died on 21 November 2021 in Midelt, at the age of 97.