Vatican News have reported the death of the last of the two monks who escaped from the monastery at Tibhirine when Islamist extremists seized seven of his fellow monks in 1996. Their report is here.
The story of the monks of Tibhirine is very ably told in John W Kiser's book "The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria", and in the film "Of Gods and Men", which draws significantly on John Kiser's book. My observations on the film can be found by inserting the search "Of Gods and Men" in to the search box of this blog.
After the events in Algeria, the two monks who remained from the community settled in Morocco.
In their new home, they both used to say they considered themselves as a “small remnant” of Tibhirine: “Our presence in the monastery – Frère Jean-Pierre said – is a sign of faithfulness to the Gospel, to the Church and to the Algerian people”.
He also said he often asked himself why he was allowed to survive the massacre and that in time he realized that God had assigned him the mission to witness the events of Tibhirine and “to make known the experience of communion with our Muslim brothers, which we continue now here in the monastery of Midelt”.
Another significant witness to the experience of dialogue with the Muslim community of Tibhirine, and with Islam in general, is to be found in Christian Salenson's study of the thought of Christian de Cherge, the prior of the Tibhirine community who was among those who died as a result of the events of 1996: "Christian de Cherge: A Theology of Hope".
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