Tuesday, June 4, 2019 At a time when society and the Church are attempting to shed light on sexual abuses and assaults, notably towards minors and fragile persons, my brothers and I have judged it necessary to speak out as well. For decades now at Taizé we have been welcoming, week after week, thousands of young and not-so-young people from Europe and from the whole world. Aware of our (...)
In the very particular context of what the world is experiencing at this time, we remember that at Easter 1970 in Taizé a “joyful news” was announced. It was the first stage in the preparation of the “Council of Youth”, which opened in 1974A fortnight before Easter, around twenty young adults from every continent gathered together with Brother Roger to work on this statement. It was made public (...)
Brother Thomas died during the night of 11th - 12th January, 2019. He would have had his 80th birthday in early February.Signs of a long-term illness appeared more than three years ago, and over the last year and a half, his health diminished a lot, and this included a loss of memory. However, apart from one extended stay in hospital after a fall, he stayed at home in Taizé until the end. He (...)
Sieds Stoop, who took the name of Brother François on entering the Taizé Community in 1951, was born on 11 August 1929 in Leeuwarden, in the province of Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands.His father was a lawyer. He had two brothers who died before him. Member of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, he studied theology in Utrecht and then Geneva, where he defended his thesis on "The (...)
Brother Alois (Alois Löser) was born on June 11th, 1954 in Bavaria, subsequently living in Stuttgart. His parents were born and grew up in the Sudetenland, a region then part of Czechoslovakia. Of German origin, Brother Alois has held French nationality since 1984 and is a Roman Catholic. After several visits to Taizé, beginning in 1970, he stayed for a year as a (...)
Many young people come to Taizé every year, but how can they be encouraged to pray and work with others in the places where they live? The notion of a pilgrimage of trust wants to address this concern by proposing to each person to set out... "Walk forward on your way, because it exists only by your walking. " First of all a meeting During the stages of the pilgrimage of trust, whether big or small and international or local, the participants and their hosts are first invited to encounter others. Sometimes families (...)
After a time of preparation, a new brother in the community makes his lifelong commitment. Here are the words used to express this commitment.Beloved brother, what are you asking for? The mercy of God and the community of my brothers. May God complete in you what he has begun. Brother, you trust in God’s mercy: remember that the Lord Christ comes to help your humble faith and that committing himself with you, he fulfils for you his promise: Truly, there is no one who has left everything because of Christ and the Gospel who will not receive (...)
Everything began in 1940 when, at the age of twenty-five, Brother Roger left Switzerland, the country where he was born, to go and live in France, the country his mother came from. For years he had been ill with tuberculosis, and during that long convalescence he had matured within him the call to create a community. When the Second World War began, he had the conviction that without wasting time he should come to the assistance of people going through this ordeal, just as his grandmother had done during the First World War. The small (...)
Today, the Taizé Community is made up of about hundred brothers, Catholics and from various Protestant backgrounds, coming from around thirty nations. By its very existence, the community is a “parable of community” that wants its life to be a sign of reconciliation between divided Christians and between separated peoples. The brothers of the community live solely by their work. They do not (...)
