Frère Christophe Lebreton est l’un des sept moines trappistes du monastère de Notre-Dame de l’Atlas à Tibhirine (Algérie), enlevés dans la nuit du 26 au 27 mars 1996, et assassinés le 21 mai. La ...nouvelle de leur mort a connu un fort retentissement et continue de soulever bien des interrogations... Parallèlement s’est menée la relecture des événements, avec le souci de partager l’héritage laissé par la communauté décimée de Tibhirine. Ce qu'elle a laissé, c'est d'abord un grand vide pour tous ceux qui les ont connus : les amis, les voisins, les chrétiens d'Algérie. C'est ensuite une expérience spirituelle qui s'est vécue et inscrite dans les écrits des frères. C'est cet héritage-là que l’Ordre Cistercien de la Stricte Observance (o.c.s.o) a considéré devoir diffuser à un public plus large, après l’avoir repris, dans un premier temps, à l’intérieur de la famille trappiste par le biais de lettres circulaires. L’approche de cet ouvrage a été essentiellement centrée sur les écrits de Christophe, le projet étant d'y discerner l'œuvre de la grâce. Les témoignages sont venus postérieurement préciser certains détails notamment biographiques. Le souci premier a été de reconstituer l'itinéraire biographique de frère Christophe.
THE MURDER of seven Trappist monks in Algeria in 1996, little noticed in the U.S., was recorded in France and Algeria as one more spectacular detail in a civil war that seemed without mercy and ...without end. The carnage was somewhat unusual in that the victims were foreigners (Frenchmen) and members of a religious order, although nuns and priests, including the archbishop of Oran, Algeria's second largest city, were killed in the same year. But the Trappists were well ensconced in their monastery's splendid isolation -- in Tibhirine, a village in the Atlas mountains -- and they were well-liked by the local people, who respected their piety and valued the social services they provided. In "The Monks of Tibhirine," John W. Kiser argues that this murderous incident was a breaking point in the war of Islamic radicals against Algeria's military government -- it turned the majority of Algerians against the radicals. There had been Christians in North Africa since before the time of St. Augustine, and a sense of mutual respect between Christians and Muslims was pervasive and deep. Algeria's citizenry was outraged at what could be called, in the profoundest sense, a violation of hospitality, not to mention the barbarism of the murders (only the monks' heads were found). Mr. Kiser's premise is that while social injustice and authoritarian rule in Algeria had created a widespread feeling of near desperation, Algerians in general abhorred the tactics of the Islamic radicals, whose definition of "infidel" grew alongside their attempts to wipe the category out: impious Muslims, intellectuals, women without hijabs, foreigners, anyone connected with the "tyrannous" state and finally other radicals judged not radical enough. That Algeria should be governed according to the rules of Islam, not modern democracy, was not an unpopular idea in Algeria at the time. That the idea should be brought into being on oceans of blood apparently was.
