Charles de Foucauld, apostle of Christ to the Moslems
On July 26, 2016, the throat of an 85-year-old priest was cut in his church near Rouen by two jihadists. 100 years earlier, on December 1st, 1916, Fr. Charles de Foucauld was assassinated in Tamanrasset, Algeria.
On July 29, 1916, the hermit of Hoggar, Fr. de Foucauld, sent René Bazin, a member of the Academie française, a letter with the following statement: “If we do not learn how to make Frenchmen of these peoples, they will drive us out. The only way to make them French is to make them Christians.” A few lines above, the religious described his apostolate to the Moslems to Bazin: “As we become closer, I speak, always or almost always privately, of the good God, briefly, giving to each one what he can take, flight from sin, act of perfect love, act of perfect contrition, the two great commandments of the love of God and neighbour, examination of conscience, meditation on the four last things, thinking of God at the sight of His creature, etc.”
Fr. de Foucauld never went to pray at a mosque, did not invite Moslems to Mass, did not say, “If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence.” He wrote in his diary on June 30, 1903, “Let each one of us offer to the Sacred Heart prayers and penance for the conversion of the Moslems and the arrival of many holy workers in this field of the Heavenly Father, that each may be not only a good example, but a perpetual ‘divine’ example, an alter Christus: then grace will descend, ignorance will disappear, goodwill will spring up, Jesus will reign… The conversion of the Moslems presents no more difficulty that that of ancient Rome or Babylon the great; let us be like to the apostles in fervour, we will be it by success; let us work miracles of fervour, and God will work miracles of grace.”
Fr. Alain Lorans
