A LAY Anglican from West Yorkshire has been appointed Prior of the Taizé Community in France, becoming only the third person to head the ecumenical movement since its foundation in 1940.
“With the world and Church having changed so much over the last two decades, I feel the time has come for a Brother who entered our community after me to take over,” the current Prior, Brother Alois Loeser (Feature, 15 December 2006), said this week.
“In the family-like understanding we have of our community life, the ministry of prior has neither an age-limit nor time-limit fixed in advance. But I said to myself: it is up to me to pass on this charge while I can take time to prepare this transition without any constraints.”
A statement said that Andrew Thorpe, known as Brother Matthew, who was born in Pudsey, had been chosen after a community consultation “to ensure continuity”. Brother Matthew joined the Taizé Community at the age of 21 in 1986. Brother Alois had “complete confidence” that the new prior would ensure Taizé remained “a little parable of communion” according to “the intuition of its founder”, the statement said. He will take up his office on Advent Sunday, 3 December.
Set up under wartime German occupation by the Swiss Protestant Roger Schutz, Taizé hosts around 100 full-time Brothers from various denominations and countries, all linked by monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
The community, which has been visited by church leaders including St John Paul II, Patriarch Bartholomew I, and several Archbishops of Canterbury, attracts thousands of young people and families for residential worship events. It also organises youth meetings, or Pilgrimages of Trust, in European cities at the end of each year, as well as peace gatherings around the world.
Brother Alois, a Roman Catholic from Stuttgart who joined the community at the age of 19, became Prior after Brother Roger was stabbed to death by a Romanian woman during vespers on 16 August 2005.
Taizé members set up ecumenical contact points for the needy across Eastern Europe after the collapse of communist rule at the end of the 1980s. They also run missions in Africa, Asia, and North and South America.
Reporting the nomination of Brother Matthew, Vatican Radio praised the community’s “strong devotion to peace and justice through prayer and meditation”, adding that it was now “one of the world’s most important sites of Christian pilgrimage”.
The Anglican Centre in Rome expressed “profound gratitude” to Brother Alois, who composed some of Taizé’s well-known songs, for “promoting a greater spirit of collaboration” among young Christians and church leaders.
“His love for Christ and for those different from us has touched hearts who in turn have given their lives to be instruments of reconciliation and peace,” a statement from the Centre said on Monday.
“We assure Brother Matthew of our prayers and sustained support as he is called to lead the Taizé Community. His diligence and spirit of service for the cause of ecumenism are qualities that fit him to the role.”
In December, Taizé pledged “decisive action” against spiritual or sexual abuse after claims that community members had committed sexual assaults.
A statement by Brother Alois regretted a “lack of clear and swift action” in dealing with the allegations, adding that the “intolerable and appalling” incidents prevented “any form of idealising” of the community.