Posted on 05/25/2010 7:40:29 AM PDT by NYer
.- At the end the prestigious 12-day Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, a film on a group of French monks who were martyred in Africa during the 1990s won the event's second highest honor.
“Of Gods and Men,” a film by the French director Xavier Beauvois, centers around the true story of seven Cistercian monks who were taken hostage and murdered by Islamic fundamentalists in 1996. Though the monks were told to return to their native France, the group refused and chose to remain in the conflict-torn region of the Algerian mountains, knowing that they would be martyred.
On Sunday, the movie was awarded the “Grand Prix” honor, which is the festival's second highest prize.
Kate Muir, a film critic for the London-based Times Online, called the film the “most intensely passionate” one of the Cannes event, and according to her, during the movie's premier the “audience wept.”
In her May 19 review, Muir discussed Beauvois' depiction of the monks, who lived contemplative lives in the service of the poor in the Atlas Mountains. In the film, the seven men build strong friendships with their surrounding community and live in relative peace until conflict arises between the local government and extremist groups. Though the monks are advised by everyone involved to leave, each one decides to stay and is eventually held hostage and murdered by the fundamentalists.
“The deep humanity of the monks, their respect for Islam and their generosity towards their village neighbors make (up) the reason for our choice,” stated the festival jury who issued the award. “This movie of great artistic value benefits from a remarkable group of actors and follows the daily rhythm of work and liturgy.”
During the night of March 27-28, 1996, seven monks of the Cistercian Monastery of Our Lady of Atlas, near the village of Tibhirine in Algeria, were abducted by Islamic fundamentalists. Their abduction was claimed by a radical faction of the GIA (Groupe Islamique Armé) in a communiqué dated April 18, 1996 and published on April 27. In a second communiqué, dated May 23, the GIA announced that the monks had been executed on May 21, 1996. Their remains were identified and their funeral Mass was celebrated in the Catholic Cathedral of Algiers on Sunday, June 2. They were buried in the cemetery of their monastery at Tibhirine on June 4, 1996.
The surviving members of the Atlas community have been helped by volunteers from several other Trappist monasteries in different parts of the world. Their community is now established near Midelt in Morocco.
The seven Brothers taken as hostages and then assassinated were all of French nationality. It has been decided that any future process for their official beatification will be undertaken in union with the other Christian martyrs of Algeria.
Our Brothers had received their monastic formation in different French monasteries -- Bellefontaine, Aiguebelle and Tamié, -- as the following brief biographies show:
Born on January 18, 1937, at Colmar (Haut-Rhin), he entered the monastery of Atlas on August 20, 1969, when already a priest (ordination: March 21, 1964). He made his noviciate at Aiguebelle, and his solemn profession at Atlas on October 1, 1976. He was the elected Titular Prior of Atlas since 1984. He had studied in Rome from 1972 to 1974 and was deeply involved in interreligious dialogue. His Testament, written over a year before his death but only discovered afterwards, has already become a classic of modern religious literature. For a more in-depth biographical study, see Monk, Martyr and Mystic by Dom Bernardo Olivera.
Born on January 31, 1914, at Bourg-le-Péage (Drome), he entered the monastery of Aiguebelle on December 7, 1941, and was the oldest member of the group. He went to Atlas in 1946, and made solemn profession there on August 15, 1949, thus spending more than 50 years in Algeria. He was a Doctor of Medicine before entering the monastery and was asked by his superiors at Tibhirine to establish a small clinic there for the sake of their neighbors. For this reason he was very well known in the whole region.
Born on October 11, 1950, at Blois (Loire et Cher), he entered the monastery of Tamié on November 1, 1974, and made solemn profession there on November 1, 1980. He went to Atlas in 1987 and was ordained priest on January 1, 1990. He was Father Master of novices and Subprior (second superior). He also is one of the first members of the generation of 1968 to give his life for the faith. A selection of his many poems and the final part of his Diary have been published posthumously.
Born on May 21, 1944, at Ste Anne (Loire Atlantique), he entered the monastery of Bellefontaine on November 4, 1980. He went to Atlas in 1984 and made solemn profession there on August 28, 1986. He was community cook and gardener, noted for his simplicity and spirit of prayer.
Born on March 1, 1930, at St Maixent (Deux-Sèvres), he entered the monastery of Bellefontaine on March 1, 1981, having been a priest since April 2, 1956. He went to Atlas in 1989 and made solemn profession there on March 21, 1990. Although Superior since 1992 of Atlas' annex house in Morocco, he was at Atlas at the time of the abduction, having gone there for the election of the Prior of Atlas, which was to have taken place on March 31, 1996.
Born on July 27, 1933, at Touvois (Loire Atlantique), he entered the monastery of Bellefontaine on July 19, 1983. He had been a priest since December 17, 1960, dedicating himself in a special way to the street apostolate. He went to Atlas in 1987 and made solemn profession there on May 1, 1989. He was the community's enthusiastic cantor.
Born on April 17, 1939, at Vinzier (Haute-Savoie), he worked as a plumber before entering the monastery of Tamié on August 20, 1984. He went to Atlas in 1989 and made solemn profession there on August 20, 1991. He was gifted and competent in every type of manual work.
Memorial of the Brothers of Tibhirine (Monastery of Esmeraldas - Equatory) Photo by brother Eric
(presentation of this icon - french text)
Thank you. I would not have known about this horrible crime and movie if not for your post.
http://www.monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=497
If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. To accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I would like them to pray for me: how worthy would I be found of such an offering?
I would like them to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity. My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a space of lucidity which would enable me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.
I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I don’t see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder. It would be too high a price to pay for what will be called, perhaps, the “grace of martyrdom” to owe this to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.
I know the contempt in which Algerians taken as a whole can be engulfed. I know, too, the caricatures of Islam which encourage a certain idealism. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience in identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam is something different. It is a body and a soul. I have proclaimed it often enough, I think, in view of and in the knowledge of what I have received from it, finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church, precisely in Algeria, and already respecting believing Muslims.
My death, obviously, will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But these must know that my insistent curiosity will then be set free. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills: Immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with Him His children of Islam as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, playing with the differences.
This life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that JOY in and in spite of everything. In this THANK YOU which is said for everything in my life, from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, O my friends of this place, besides my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families, a hundredfold as was promised!
And you too, my last minute friend, who will not know what you are doing, Yes, for you too I say this THANK YOU AND THIS “A-DIEU”-—to commend you to this God in whose face I see yours. And may we find each other, happy “good thieves” in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both. . .
AMEN!
May their souls and all of the sould of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Tim Burton blocked it from winning the top prize.
Thank you for posting, I,too would not have known...
I shall remember them in prayer....
I’m amazed it even got shown.
Christ continues to blow minds.
Why?
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