In the morning of March 22, I received the following email message: “Last night, Hélène left us in her sleep, quietly, just like that. She passed away gently, with no fighting. She was efficient all her life and without making any fuss. We will miss her”. These words express all the essentials with the sober […]
I cannot say that I was disappointed by the Synod’s Final Document on Synodality, because disappointment is only possible when there are expectations. But I feel deeply sorry for so many men and women (especially women) who had said to themselves, “This time yes, the Synod will succeed! May God be blessed!” Yes, may Life, […]
There are no words to express it, only astonishment and questions: how have we all arrived, each one on his own path of misdirection, at this madness that plunges two brotherly peoples into this escalation of hatred and revenge, of despair and death? How have Israel and Palestine become a tragic parable of the misfortune […]
The erasing has begun: the Fondation Abbé Pierre has decided to change its name. Emmaüs has closed the memorial dedicated to him in Esteville, near Rouen, and is going to change its logo. But beyond that, a vast name change movement has been launched across the country. Is it necessary? Is anything else possible? Abbé […]
I did not expect that this fourth Synod of Pope Francis’ pontificate, like the first three, would take a decisive step towards the urgent and absolutely necessary institutional reform of the Roman Catholic Church. Considering what we have seen so far, I could not think that he could carry out the indispensable condition of such […]
I find the story of the convent of the Poor Clare Sisters of Belorado over the last few months both ludicrous and distressing. Whichever way you look at it, it is distressing for the Poor Clare Sisters. Ludicrous, as far as all the other players are concerned. The figure of the “schismatic” bishop accompanied by […]
I would like to pay a humble tribute of gratitude to Jürgen Moltmann, who passed away on 3 June. He is among the theologians who have encouraged my personal journey and reflection since the late 1980s. I honour his theology, which was guided by the world’s wounds, dangers and dramas, and entirely by his commitment […]
Rose-Marie Barandiaran: Our job as human beings, according to Bonhoeffer, “is not a religious problem: it is to live the joys and sufferings following the steps of Jesus. To interiorize, to question our moral conscience, to flee from individualism and the self-satisfaction offered by pious works and the search for salvation”. “Faith is our work […]
Rose-Marie Barandiaran: is it not thanks to the “withdrawal of God” that man allows himself to be reached by him? Why, then, do we invoke him in our crises? Why do we separate the worldly from the sacred? Jesus was not a priest. He was simply human. If we take God’s sufferings seriously, if we […]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany (today Wroclaw, Poland). He became a Lutheran pastor and opposed the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s. Suspected of involvement in the assassination attempt on Hitler, he was imprisoned in Berlin in 1943 but maintained contacts with the outside world. He was subsequently transferred […]
