Blessed Pierre Claverie and Companions

Blessed Pierre Claverie and Companions are nineteen martyrs of Algeria from eight religious institutes: a Dominican, the bishop of Oran, together with twelve men and six women religious. During the years of civil war they did not leave the country or their Muslim neighbors, and they gave their lives between 1994 and 1996. The Church commemorates them on May 8, the anniversary of the death of the first of them.

In 1992 the army annulled elections in which the Islamists had taken the lead. A civil war broke out in which more than 150,000 people died, most of them Muslims. In the fall of 1993 the Armed Islamic Group gave foreigners a month to leave the country. Many left; they stayed with the people they served.

The first were killed on May 8, 1994, in the diocesan library in the Casbah of Algiers: the Marist Brother Henri Vergès and Sister Paul-Hélène Saint-Raymond of the Little Sisters of the Assumption. In October two Augustinian Missionary Sisters, Esther Paniagua Alonso and Caridad Álvarez Martín, were killed on their way to Mass. Esther used to say that no one could take their life from them, because they had already given it. In December four Missionaries of Africa died in Tizi Ouzou: Jean Chevillard, Alain Dieulangard, Charles Deckers and Christian Chessel. In 1995 Bibiane Leclercq and Angèle-Marie Littlejohn, Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles, were killed, as was Odette Prévost of the Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

On the night of March 26 to 27, 1996, seven Trappists who had decided together to stay with their neighbors were kidnapped from the monastery of Tibhirine in the Atlas Mountains. They were the prior, Christian de Chergé; Brother Luc Dochier, a physician who had treated the local people for half a century; and Christophe Lebreton, Michel Fleury, Bruno Lemarchand, Célestin Ringeard and Paul Favre-Miville. According to the act of beatification, they died on May 21. In his testament the prior had written that if he became a victim of terrorism, he would want it remembered that his life had been given to God and to this country. John Paul II recalled these words in 1996.

Pierre Claverie was born on May 8, 1938, in Algiers, into a French family settled there for generations. While studying in France he realized that until then he had lived in a “colonial bubble,” and he entered the Dominicans. After his ordination he returned to Algeria, learned Arabic and taught it. In 1981 John Paul II appointed him bishop of Oran. He publicly condemned violence and, despite threats, did not leave his diocese. On August 1, 1996, he was killed by a bomb outside the bishop’s residence, together with his driver and friend, a young Muslim, Mohamed Bouchikhi.

On January 26, 2018, Pope Francis recognized their martyrdom, and on December 8 of that year Cardinal Angelo Becciu, in his name, declared them blessed at the shrine of Notre-Dame de Santa Cruz in Oran. In the apostolic letter the Pope called them faithful heralds of the Gospel, humble builders of peace and outstanding witnesses of Christian charity.