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Bishop Tessier, an Algerian passion

 

In his little white Renault 4 L, slaloming with the assurance of the Algerian driver, he was able to tell you the details of each corner of the city of which he was the archbishop, decorating here and there with an anecdote on this or that illustrious character from the Algerian Republic or a very local joke, with its Algerian Arabic.

But he left far from the city and the country which he cherished this morning of the 1is December, struck down by a stroke, at 91, in Lyon, the feast day of Blessed Charles de Foucauld.

“A sign of a hope which is fulfilled, the death of Bishop Teissier occurred on the day of the liturgical memory of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, the ‘universal brother’ in the process of being canonized, whose testimony certainly nourished the Archbishop Emeritus of Algiers for his own mission, ”writes Vatican News.

“A whole church dedicated to its Algerian people”

“We are very sad, but also we give thanks for his rich life given to God, to the Church, to Algeria. A nod from Heaven to our Church in Algeria which owes so much to Father Teissier in its history since the war of liberation, the independence of the country, the crossing of the dark years until today ”, testifies the current Archbishop of Algiers, Paul Desfarges, on the Caritas Algeria Facebook page. “He was the pastor of an entire church dedicated to his Algerian people. We accompany Father Henri in his Passover with our prayer. We are united with his family, his many friends in Algeria, France and around the world ”, continues Mgr Desfarges.

Born in Lyon in 1929, Henri Teissier was ordained a priest in Algiers in 1955 after studying at the Carmelite seminary in Paris, before going to learn Arabic in Cairo and then returning to Algiers in 1958, where he joined his relatives. In 1965, three years after independence, he took Algerian nationality, like twenty priests, like Cardinal Duval who distinguished himself by his support for Algerian revolutionaries. Duval, who at independence declared: “In Algeria, the Church did not choose to be foreign, but Algerian. ”

In 1973, he was appointed Bishop of Oran, then coadjutor in Algiers of Cardinal Duval from 1981. He directed Caritas, from 1974 to 1987, for the MENA region during the war in Lebanon. Teissier was appointed Archbishop of Algiers in 1988, a position he would serve until his resignation in 2008 due to age, embodying the proactive and humanist approach of his predecessor who wanted “a Christian Church for Muslim Algeria”. He also chaired the North African Episcopal Conference from 1983 to 2008.

“The Kingdom is not built only where we ” make baptized ” but where we work for humanity,” he said, recalling his friends and colleagues from Caritas Algeria.

Loyalty to Algeria in hardship

But he remained active, after his retirement, in the associative network of the Church, very close to his Algerian friends, from officials to ordinary citizens. Because everyone remembers that this great man with such a soft voice refused to leave Algeria during the terrible 1990s, when the Christian community was targeted by Islamist terrorists.

“At the beginning, our Algerian neighbors invited us to leave the country to return when the crisis was over. Very few of us have made this choice, preferring to stay with our Algerian neighborhood at the time of the ordeal, ”he wrote in a column on Middle East Eye on the occasion of the beatification on December 8, 2018, nineteen Catholic clerics assassinated by armed groups between 1993 and 1996 in Algeria.

“Subsequently, our friends appreciated this decision and saw it as a sign of loyalty to Algeria in the event. Many of them have expressed themselves in this direction after each assassination ”, continues Teissier, recalling the numerous testimonies of Algerians, like this correspondent, after the assassination, in 1995, of two sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles in the popular district of Belcourt: “I pay homage to all the sisters and all the priests who defied death. You have resisted the fear, the terror, the threats hanging over you. Your services to the people and your love for Algeria and its people, which makes you feel good, that’s all they are killing. ”

“It is certainly the first time in the history of the Islamic-Christian relationship that the unjust death of a group of Christians causes such a shock in conscience”, attested the former Archbishop of Algiers.

The man of God saw this mourning in his flesh, he who had to say “Farewell” to his friends and colleagues, organizing funerals and repatriation of victims of terrorism.

“Keep hope alive”

Three years before the kidnapping and murder of the monks of Tibhirine, he visits them after threats from a leader of the GIA to pray and discuss the nagging question, stay or go. The monks decide to stay, a way of “choosing what is imposed on us” to take up one of them, Brother Christian, continuing the monastic life, to “keep hope alive” in the middle of this mountain buttress in the ‘Atlas of the Civil War which inexorably draws closer to them until the fateful kidnapping and assassination.

“My most moving memory goes back to the time when I was bishop of Algiers, when I had to give the Christmas sermon on Algerian radio. Of course, I was mostly listened to by a majority of Muslims who told me about it. We have to look back at the context of the 1990s: every week, there were dozens of attacks. This did not prevent the Algerian journalists, who were threatened, to make me come and not to give in to violence even though it was easy to reach them, ”he testified in Middle East Eye, in 2017 on the occasion of Christmas.

These tragedies, these losses, these trials do not undermine the lucidity of the Archbishop nor his humanism and his calls to live together.

Bringing Christians and Muslims together

“For 50 years, we have had this same concern over and over again: how can we live as a small Christian minority in a respectful and meaningful relationship with the Algerian partners, almost all of the Muslim faith? We have managed to live together. Even from 1991 to 1999 when we were, all together, threatened by the same violence, ”he confided to the Huffington Post Algeria, questioned in 2015 on the attacks against Charlie Hebdo. “The lack of true relationships between people of Christian tradition and people of Muslim tradition in Europe has made it impossible to understand the sensitivity of the other. It is obvious that those who have personal relations with Muslim families understand very quickly that the life of these families is governed by convictions which have crossed the centuries and that one cannot attack without deeply hurting the person ”, continues Henri Teissier. “We must increase the number of places of real encounters between people born in Christian societies and then societies of Muslim tradition. In France, and in the neighboring countries, in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Spain, there is for example, each year, in November, a week of the Islamic-Christian dialogue. Meetings between imams and religious leaders of Christian communities as well as an Islamic-Christian forum are also held annually in the Lyon region, in France. ”

« [La] Islamic-Christian relationship has formed the texture of my life of faith and my Christian witness during all these years. And I thank God who gave me this vocation and this mission, ”declared the Archbishop Emeritus to an Algerian columnist.

“Establish communion by playing with differences”

On social networks, tributes are increasing to salute his memory and his career, his mission as a man of peace and dialogue, like this message from Leïla: “A father, a brother, a friend has just left us this morning. This morning, Muslims, Christians or others will surely each in his conviction pray for him because all loved this man of peace, this lover of Algeria, this Algerian! ”

In 2015, he told a journalist in Algiers: “My message for Christmas is a message of peace, for my family but also for the human family. I hope she will multiply the links and discover that we all have the same origins. Scientists are now convinced that Africa is the cradle of humanity and that it is from the continent that men have left for other continents. I am therefore happy to answer you on this African continent, in my white identity, knowing that my ancestor was black. ”

And where he is, from now on, he will be able to continue his meditations with his brothers who have chosen Algeria despite the threat and death, and he will continue to converse with his friend, brother Christian, one of the martyrs of Tibihrine, who wrote in his sublime testament: “My death, obviously, will seem to prove right to those who quickly called me naive, or idealist: ” Let him now say what he thinks! But they must know that my most nagging curiosity will finally be released. Here is that I will be able, if it pleases God, to plunge my gaze into that of the Father to contemplate with Him his children of Islam as He sees them, all illuminated by the glory of Christ, fruits of His Passion invested by the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and re-establish resemblance by playing with differences. ”

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