Background

Roger was born the ninth and youngest child of Karl Ulrich Schütz, a Protestant pastor from Bachs in the Zürcher Unterland (Zürich Lowlands) in Switzerland, and his wife, Amélie Henriette Schütz-Marsauche, a French Protestant woman from Burgundy.

From 1937 to 1940, Roger studied Reformed theology in Strasbourg and Lausanne.

In 1940, he rode a bicycle from Geneva to Taizé, a small town near Mâcon, about 390 kilometres (240 miles) southeast of Paris. Taizé was then in unoccupied France, just beyond the line of demarcation to the zone occupied by German troops. For two years Brother Roger hid Jewish refugees before being forced to leave Taizé. In 1944, he returned to Taizé to found the Community, first as a small quasi-monastic community of men living together in poverty and celibacy.

Since the late 1950s, many thousands of young adults from many countries have found their way to Taizé to take part in weekly meetings of prayer and reflection. In addition, Taizé brothers make visits and lead meetings, large and small, in Africa, North and South America, Asia, and in Europe, as part of a “pilgrimage of trust on earth”.

The spiritual leader always kept a low profile, rarely giving interviews and refusing to permit any "cult" to grow up around himself. Prior to his death, he was due to give up his community functions because of his advanced age and ill-health which had seen him suffer from fatigue and often use a wheelchair.

Brother Roger was awarded the UNESCO prize for peace education in 1988 and wrote many books on prayer and reflection, asking young people to be confident in God and committed to their local church community and to humanity. He also wrote books about Christian spirituality and prayer, some together with Mother Teresa with whom he shared a cordial friendship.

Ecumenical ideals

All his life, Roger devoted himself to reconciling the different Christian churches. He especially addressed Christian youths. Part of his appeal may have been his dislike of formal preaching, while encouraging a spiritual quest as a common endeavor. During a Taizé gathering in Paris in 1995, he spoke to more than 100,000 young people who were sitting on the floor of an exhibition hall. "We have come here to search," he said, "or to go on searching through silence and prayer, to get in touch with our inner life. Christ always said, Do not worry, give yourself." [1]

From a Protestant background, Brother Roger undertook a step that was without precedent since the Reformation: entering progressively into a full communion with the faith of the Catholic Church without a “conversion” that would imply a break with his origins. In 1980, during a European Meeting in Rome, he said in St Peter’s Basilica in the presence of Pope John Paul II: “I have found my own identity as a Christian by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking fellowship with anyone.”

Death

Brother Roger was stabbed to death during the evening prayer service in Taizé on August 16, 2005 by Luminiţa Ruxandra Solcan. He was stabbed several times and, though one of the brothers carried him from the church, he died shortly afterwards. The assailant was immediately apprehended by members of the congregation and was placed in police custody.

His stabbing, in full view of 2,500 horrified young pilgrims at the Church of the Reconciliation in Taizé, turned a man many already believed to be a saint into a martyr, even though there is no clear link between his faith and the crime.

The funeral took place on August 23, 2005. Horst Köhler, President of Germany, and Nicolas Sarkozy, Minister of the Interior of France, were in attendance. Brother Roger's community and friends attended the liturgy in the vast monastery church at Taizé, while thousands more followed it on a huge screen in fields outside the church. Brother Roger's simple wooden coffin, a wooden icon lying upon it, was carried into the church by brothers.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Vatican's council for the unity of Christians, who concelebrated the Mass with four other priests of Taizé, said in a homily, "Yes, the springtime of ecumenism has flowered on the hill of Taizé." Beyond religious divisions, Brother Roger also abhorred the division between rich and poor. "Every form of injustice or neglect made him very sad," Cardinal Kasper said. Br. Roger's successor, Br. Alois prayed for forgiveness: "With Christ on the cross we say to you, Father, forgive her, she does not know what she did."