Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
by Gianni Valente
“I have not lost any of those you gave me,” this quote from the Gospel of John is the title of the last pastoral letter of the French Dominican Father Jean-Paul Vesco, who took office as Archbishop of Algiers on February 11, 2022. These are words by which “Jesus judges himself by placing himself under the gaze of the Father” and which every bishop and parish priest should be careful not to use as a criterion for judging his own work. Yet at the end of the pastoral letter, Archbishop Vesco seems to quote the phrase again when he writes that “every person, regardless of their origin and religion, can be considered a brother, a sister whom I must not lose.” Because "fraternity offered to all, regardless of religious, ethnic or national affiliation" - as the Dominican bishop had already written on the occasion of the canonization of Saint Charles de Foucauld - "is the hallmark of the fraternity of the disciples of Christ".
Vesco, 62, born in Lyon, headed the Algerian diocese of Oran for 10 years before becoming Archbishop of Algiers. Pope Francis will confer on him the dignity of cardinal at the consistory on Saturday 7 December. This - Archbishop Vesco is convinced - serves to live in the open horizon of universal fraternity, in the service of the Church of Algeria. A sign that "calls and urges me to greater humility because it always leads me back to the mystery of why I was chosen in the first place".
You, Friar Preacher, have used the image of the "Church of discretion" to describe the Church in Algeria. What does it mean to preach and confess the Gospel "with discretion"?
JEAN-PAUL VESCO: When I speak of the discretion of the Church, I do not mean that we do not have the right to do anything. The Gospel is proclaimed "opportune et importune" through testimony, but with discretion, that is, with respect for the faith of the other. The specificity of the proclamation of the Gospel in Algeria, in the Muslim world, is that it starts from a shared life between people who already have a faith, a different faith. In this sense, it is a different situation from the first evangelization or testimony in societies such as those of "de-Christianized" Europe.
For me, the testimony of the Gospel is inseparable from respect for the faith of the other. I bear witness to what I live, I speak when I am asked, I give an account of my faith, but I do so in the awareness that there is something in the other, a truth that escapes me. I came to Algeria to renew the Dominican presence after the death of Pierre Claverie (Bishop of Oran, killed by a bomb in 1996, ed.). Although I had never met him, I sensed in a mysterious way that there was a spiritual bond between us. He used to say: "Nobody owns God, nobody owns the truth, and I need the truth of others."
The Church of Algeria and the other Latin Rite Churches in North Africa now belong to the Dicastery for Evangelization, the "missionary" Dicastery. What does it mean to be missionaries in your countries?
VESCO: For me, the highest form of missionary is that of fraternity and friendship. I think of the Abu Dhabi Declaration on Human Fraternity, which is not just another document on interreligious dialogue, but the gesture of two people, two religious leaders, two men who do not try to convince each other. The Pope and the Grand Imam are two men who value each other's faith. And this has never happened at this level. When I saw these two men looking at each other and smiling, I saw two brothers. I felt the friendship between them. When I had an audience with Pope Francis, I told him that this was what struck me most about his Pontificate, because it also reflects our experience in Algeria.
What are you referring to in particular?
VESCO: A few months earlier, the beatification of the 19 Algerian martyrs took place at Notre-Dame de Santa Cruz in Oran, and at the end of the ceremony there were radiant faces lit up by enormous smiles. Three months later, at the meeting in Abu Dhabi, I saw the same smile between Pope Francis and Grand Imam Ahmed al Tayyeb.
The greatest evangelical witness that the Church can give is that of fraternity, of brotherhood among us, starting from the Church itself. “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another,” says Jesus... The Pope wants to express precisely this in the Church today.
How can fraternity be lived and expressed between people of different faiths?
VESCO: Of course it is not enough to say: "This is my brother or this is my sister". In Algeria, people call each other brother or sister, the model is the family. But when a Muslim Algerian sometimes says to me: "You are my brother", he means something serious. He wants to say that you are my friend. And in that moment a kind of transmission of faith takes place.
No Muslim, not even an educated one, has ever told me anything really essential about our faith. On the other hand, we need each other's faith. I need to come into contact with Muslims of good faith, not to believe in their faith, but to enter into an authentic exchange; and to show them something of my faith. Friendship, like fraternity, is based on the gratuitousness of the relationship. As long as there is no gratuitous relationship, I do not believe that the treasure of the Gospel can be transmitted.
The recent history of the Algerian Church is marked by the experience of martyrdom. How has this experience changed your path?
VESCO: The Church of Algeria is a Church of martyrs and our martyrs are martyrs of fraternity. Pope Francis sent us a message on the day of the beatification in which he said he was convinced that this unprecedented event had marked "in the Algerian sky a great sign of fraternity for the whole world"... If they are martyrs, it is because they took the risk of living: they could have left, but they stayed, and that is why their martyrdom is a martyrdom of fraternity.
Often, the suffering of Christians is invoked to strengthen the resistance and condemnation of individuals and groups who are labelled as enemies and persecutors...
VESCO: In the years marked by the bloody deaths of these martyrs, more than 100 imams and 200,000 Muslims were also killed in Algeria. The strength of the testimony of the martyrs is that they wanted to stay to share a common destiny. Their death confirmed their commitment to live a certain life. We wanted the 19 martyrs to be beatified together to affirm that they were the testimony of an entire Church at a certain moment in history in the midst of a people.
What does it mean, as you said, that the Church in Algeria was "purified" by the events of the martyrs?
VESCO: I came to this Church in 2002, at a time when life was returning to normal, but nothing was as it had been before... People had to learn to live normally again, and that was not easy. It was a bit like after a war: the heroes return to normal society, but that is inevitably complicated. A Jesuit, Paul Decisier, used to say: we were ordinary people living in an extraordinary situation, and now we had to return to the ordinary. It was very moving for me to see how they went through this transition.
The red color associated with the cardinalate recalls the blood of the martyrs... Do you agree?
VESCO: My election as cardinal remains a deep mystery for me... But whatever the reason for my appointment, the important thing is that I now ask myself what the Lord wants for me. The red of the cardinalate makes me humbles, because I know that I do not deserve it compared to so many others. I want it to be a sign of simplicity. It does not make me a "prince of the Church", on the contrary, it calls me and pushes me to greater humility because it always brings me back to the mystery of why I was chosen in the first place.
How did your priestly vocation and the call to religious life begin?
VESCO: My entry into the Dominicans was very sudden. I joined at the age of 33, I was a lawyer and had always felt the calling to be a lawyer. I had always imagined my life in terms of a vocation that eventually manifested itself in the form of involvement in unions and in politics and then as a parish council member. I became a lawyer and then had the feeling that I had reached the glass ceiling. I had achieved everything I wanted, but I had not found happiness, something was still missing. This glass ceiling collapsed on August 14, 1994 in Lisieux. I was visiting a monk friend and there was an ordination that day. I felt that the Lord was calling me at that moment. There was a before and an after on that August 15, 1994, when I said yes in the depths of my heart.
And what do the Dominicans have to do with it?
VESCO: I had a Dominican uncle, Jean-Luc Vesco, and my office happened to be next to the monastery where he lived, so I often visited him, and I always told myself that if one day I were to be ordained a priest, I would be somewhere other than with the Dominicans... But then, in a very mysterious way, I felt that I belonged there.
The pastoral letter of the bishops of North Africa for Advent says that the Bible cannot be used to justify war and occupation...
VESCO: On October 10, 2023, three days after October 7, I wrote that what Hamas did is inexcusable, but not without reason. I lived in Jerusalem for two years, I was in Gaza, I experienced the humiliation of these people, and I also met many Israelis who were against Netanyahu. I can only state that for more than 20 years Netanyahu and his allies have not wanted peace, they do not want a two-state solution, and we are in fact in a logic of annihilation. This policy is genocide, which means that there is no way out except the absolute annihilation of a people as such. Our position as a bishops' conference is to say that war does not bring peace. War will destroy, but it will not bring peace.
What responsibility does the international community have for what is happening in the Holy Land and the Middle East?
VESCO: I find it very difficult to see the colonization of the last 20 years in the 21st century. Colonization through oppression and expulsion. The whole world is returning to the rule of the strongest. It has always been like this, although there was a time when we hoped it would be different. When I was born, one might have thought that the balance would shift, but that was not the case.
The political morality that is emerging in many parts of the world is the right of the strongest. And the peace and happiness of peoples cannot be built on this "immorality". (Agenzia Fides, 6/12/2024)
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