ALGERIA BEATIFICATION OF TIBHIRINE MONKS

These religious refused to leave the country after decolonization and then during the decade of blood that hit the country. In 1993 Algeria plunged into the terror of a civil war that makes 150,000 to 200,000 dead.

The Islamist GIA is sowing terror and, on Christmas Eve, an emir asks the monks to leave the country. Their lives are in danger, but the religious decide to stay. Two years later, in 1966, seven of the nine Trappist monks of the Tibhirine community are kidnapped and murdered by the GIA.

This idea of ​​their official recognition by the Church sprang up about twenty years ago and in January of this year, the Pope signed the decree by which they were officially recognized as martyrs. As is the tradition of the Catholic Church, his blessed are celebrated where they lived.

It is a historic event for Algeria, for Christians living there as for the universal Church. "It is very rare that a beatification takes place so soon after the death of the people concerned and just as new that it affects a memory that is still so sensitive twenty years later," admitted Bishop Jean-Paul Vesco, when a recent conference organized at the Center Pierre Claverie, in Oran, in front of an Algerian public. In the name of "civil harmony" and national unity, this "black decade" of civil war is still taboo.

The decision of the Algerian authorities and in particular the Minister of Religious Affairs, Mohamed Aissa, to welcome the celebration is fraught with meaning. It testifies to a form of recognition for Algerians converted to Protestantism, a recognition of the Amazigh (Berber) identity of Algeria and pleads for a plural Algeria.

Through this exceptional beatification, a first in the land of Islam is also shown that men and women of the church were killed alongside Muslims who rejected radicalization and violence .

This exceptional beatification marks a step forward in interreligious dialogue.