Jean-Marie Aron Lustiger (; 17 September 1926 – 5 August 2007) was a French cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Paris from 1981 until his resignation in 2005. He was made a cardinal in 1983 by Pope John Paul II. His life is depicted in the 2013 film Le métis de Dieu (The Jewish Cardinal).
Life and work Early years Lustiger was born Aron Lustiger in Paris to a Jewish family. His parents, Charles and Gisèle Lustiger, were Ashkenazi Jews from Będzin, Poland, who had left Poland around World War I.Sophie de Ravinel, Le cardinal Lustiger est mort, Le Figaro, 5 August 2007 Lustiger's father ran a hosiery shop. Aron Lustiger studied at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, where he first encountered anti-Semitism.Henri Tincq, L'adieu à Jean-Marie Lustiger, Le Monde, 6 August 2007 Interview with the Israeli daily, Yediot Ahronoth, published in 1982 by the journal Le Débat (quoted by Sophie de Ravinel, Le cardinal Lustiger est mort, Le Figaro, 5 August 2007) Visiting Germany in 1937, he was hosted by an anti-Nazi Protestant family whose children had been required to join the Hitler Youth.
Sometime between the ages of ten and twelve, Lustiger came across a Protestant Bible and felt inexplicably attracted to it. On the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the family moved to Orléans.Cardinal Lustiger, The Telegraph, 7 August 2007
In March 1940, during Holy Week, the 13-year-old Lustiger decided to convert to Catholicism. On 21 August he was baptized as Aron Jean-Marie by the Bishop of Orléans, Jules-Marie-Victor Courcoux. His sister converted later.John Tagliabue, French Catholic leader, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, dies at 80, International Herald Tribune, 6 August 2007 In October 1940, the Vichy regime passed the first of many anti-Semitic laws, which forced increasingly strict conditions on Jews in the unoccupied zone.
Lustiger, his father, and sister sought refuge in unoccupied southern France, while his mother returned to Paris to run the family business. In September 1942, his mother was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp where she was murdered the following year. The surviving family returned to Paris at the end of the war. Lustiger's father tried unsuccessfully to have his son's baptism annulled, and even sought the help of the chief rabbi of Paris.Cardinal Lustiger, The Telegraph, 7 August 2007
Early career
Lustiger graduated from the Sorbonne with a literature degree in 1946. He entered the seminary of the Carmelite fathers in Paris, and later the Institut Catholique de Paris. He first visited Israel in 1951. On 17 April 1954 he was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Émile-Arsène Blanchet, rector of the Institut Catholique. From 1954 to 1959 he was a chaplain at the Sorbonne.
For the next ten years, he was the director of Richelieu Centre, which trains university chaplains and counsels lay teachers and students of the grandes écoles, graduate schools such as the ÉNS-Fontenay-Saint-Cloud or the Ecole des Chartes.
From 1969 to 1979, Lustiger was vicar of the Parish of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal, in the wealthy 16th arrondissement of Paris. His parochial assistant was André Vingt-Trois, who years later would succeed him as Archbishop of Paris.
On 10 November 1979, Lustiger was appointed Bishop of Orléans by Pope John Paul II after a 15-month vacancy. John Paul had been advised by Cardinal Paolo Bertoli, who was displeased with a new illustrated Catechism for French urban youth (Pierres vivantes) and was on bad terms with most of the French clergy.Christian Terras, Jean-Marie Lustiger : un colosse aux pieds d’argile , 6 August 2007
Lustiger received his episcopal consecration on 8 December 1979 from Cardinal François Marty, with Archbishop Eugène Ernoult of Sens and Bishop Daniel Pézeril serving as co-consecrators. When installed as bishop, Lustiger avoided all reference to his liberal predecessor Guy-Marie Riobé, a pacifist closely allied to Catholic Action.
Archbishop of Paris (1981–2005)
On 31 January 1981 Lustiger was named Archbishop of Paris, succeeding Cardinal Marty. According to Georges Suffert, he was supported by a letter to John Paul II from André Frossard. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Traditionalist Catholic group Society of Saint Pius X, criticized his nomination. He said that the position was being given to "someone who is not truly of French origin". Liberal French clergy considered Lustiger's nomination a defeat for them.
Lustiger was considered a first-rate communicator and he was a personal friend of Jean Gélamur, head of the Catholic media group Bayard Presse. The new archbishop was particularly attentive to the media; he developed Catholic radio and television channels (Radio Notre-Dame) after François Mitterrand's liberalization of French media in 1981. He founded KTO TV in 1999, which struggled financially., Le Monde, 5 August 2007 Lustiger also founded a new seminary for training priests, bypassing the existing arrangements.
He was considered, primarily by his critics, to be authoritarian, earning him the nickname of "Bulldozer". Lustiger deposed the vicars general Michel Guittet and Pierre Gervaise, had Georges Gilson transferred to Le Mans and Emile Marcus to Nantes, personally headed the meetings of the episcopal council, and made numerous other changes. He dismantled P. Béguerie's team in Saint-Séverin. In October 1981, the French bishops elected the more liberal Jean-Félix-Albert-Marie Vilnet as President of the Episcopal Conference, with whom Lustiger was on difficult terms throughout his life. In 1982, he invited for the celebration of Lent in Notre-Dame Roger Etchegaray (whom he disliked at first) and the Jesuit Roger Heckel. He participated in the annual meeting of the movement Comunione e Liberazione in Rimini in summer 1982. In January 1983 he invited Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Notre-Dame de Paris, where the latter criticized new catechisms proposed by a large part of the French clergy.
He was incardinated Cardinal-Priest of Santi Marcellino e Pietro by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 2 February 1983, at the same time as the Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac. On 26 November 1994, he was named Cardinal-Priest of San Luigi dei Francesi. As a cardinal, Lustiger began to attract international attention. He was considered papabile, (i.e. having good chances of being elected pope). Certain Catholic circles interpreted the Prophecy of Malachy in reference to him as a Jewish Pope.
Lustiger carried out several reforms in the Archdiocese of Paris concerning priests' training, creating in 1984 an independent theological faculty in the École cathédrale de Paris, distinct from the Catholic University of Paris aka Institut Catholique de Paris (ICP). He constructed seven new churches in Paris. In addition, he supported the development of charismatic movements, such as the Emmanuel Community (of which he was in charge until June 2006) and the Chemin Neuf Community. The latter was recognized in 1984 by the Vatican as an International Association of the Faithful. Some parishes were entrusted to charismatic movements. In Paris, he ordained 200 priests; they represented 15 percent of the French total, and were drawn from a diocese which had two per cent of the French population. Strongly attached to the ideal of priestly celibacy, Lustiger used his position as Ordinary for Orientals to prevent the deployment of married Eastern Rite Catholic priests in France. He favoured development of a permanent diaconate, to be filled mainly by married men involved in the workplace.
In 1984, Lustiger led a mass rally at Versailles in opposition to the Savary Law, which reduced state aid to private (which was mostly Catholic) education. He was seen to surpass his comrades Jean Vilnet, Paul Guiberteau and Jean Honoré, who were leaders on the issue. Shortly afterwards Alain Savary had to resign. This opposition cemented Lustiger's relations with the groups supporting private education, from whose midst he was to draw most of his candidates for the priesthood. He supported the 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State, but, when testifying before the Commission Stasi on secularism, he opposed the 2004 French law on secularity, which limited conspicuous religious symbols in schools.La Croix, 24 September 2003
Lustiger had his right-hand man, André Vingt-Trois, appointed bishop in 1988. Following Marcel Lefebvre's schism in June 1988, Lustiger tried to reduce tensions with the Traditionalist Catholics, celebrating a Tridentine Mass and sending conservative priest Patrick Le Gal as his emissary to Lefebvre. Along with Cardinal Albert Decourtray, he strongly criticised Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988, clashing with the liberal bishop Jacques Gaillot.
Along with his clerical contacts, Lustiger maintained contacts with the political world. He developed rather good working relations with François Mitterrand's Socialist government, despite their political disagreements. During the celebrations of the second centenary of the French Revolution in 1989, he opposed Minister of Culture Jack Lang on the Pantheonization of the Abbé Grégoire, one of the first priests to take the oath on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. For this, he was criticized by the liberal Catholic review Golias.Quand Mgr Lustiger corrige l’abbé Grégoire , Golias, 4 August 2006 He deposed the priest Alain Maillard de La Morandais from his diplomatic functions toward the political sphere, as he considered him to be too pro-Balladur during the 1995 presidential campaign. Lustiger, as Archbishop of Paris, presided over Mitterrand's funeral.
Lustiger's search for dialogue with politicians led to his founding in 1992 of the Centre Pastoral d'Etudes politiques at St. Clotilde church in the 7th arrondissement, close to the hub of the French establishment. He sought to identify and conciliate rising national élites in politics and communication. He was less amenable to initiatives from non-French Catholic groups or individuals (their position was inconclusively debated at the Diocesan Synod).
Relations with the cultural sphere were promoted by a series of Lenten Sermons at Notre-Dame (into which dialogue with prominent French intellectuals and state-employed academics were introduced) and by plans for the opening of the Centre St. Bernard in the 5th arrondissement.
Lustiger was never elected as head of the French Episcopal Conference by his peers, with whom he was not popular. He was elected a member of the Académie française in 1995, succeeding Albert Decourtray and bypassing Cardinal Paul Poupard. Two years later, he organized a World Youth Day in Paris, attended by more than a million people.
Theology and ethics Lustiger upheld papal authority in theology and morals: "There are opinions and there is faith," he said in 1997. "When it is faith, I agree with the Pope because I am responsible for the faith." Cardinal Lustiger was a strong believer in priestly celibacy and opposed abortion and the ordination of women. Although he fully endorsed John Paul II's views on bioethics, he considered condom use acceptable if one of the partners had HIV. He founded the Non-Governmental Organization Tibériade to attend to AIDS patients.
He considered Christianity to be the accomplishment of Judaism, and the New Testament to be the logical continuation of the Old Testament. In Le Choix de Dieu (The Choice of God, 1987), he declared that modern anti-Semitism was the product of the Enlightenment, whose philosophy he attacked.