Paul Couturier

Paul Couturier ( born July 29, 1881 in Lyon, † March 24, 1953 ) was a French priest and Benediktineroblate. He is regarded as a charismatic initiator of "spiritual ecumenism". The Council document Unitatis redintegratio took pulses from him. To date, reference is made in the inter-religious dialogue on it.

Life

Couturier came from a family of industrialists. He spent his childhood in Lyon's district Guillotière. After attending secondary school at the Vincentians, he decided to become a priest, and received on 9 June 1906, the consecration. He then graduated from the Catholic University of Lyon licentiate of Physics and received a teaching position at the Kartäuserschule in Lyon's district of La Croix- Rousse, which he held until 1946.

1923, the spiritual and material needs of the Russian revolution refugees in Lyon was brought to him and he made it his business. The religious beliefs of the orthodoxy came into view. Thus the developing issue of church unity presented to him in 1932 during a stay with the Benedictines in the Belgian Amay, where he impressed Lambert Beauduin. In January 1933 he organized in Lyon, the first ecumenical prayer meeting from which later emerged the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In 1934 he met the Russian Orthodox metropolitans for the exiles Eulogius Georgievski († 1946).

1936 suggested Couturier to a prayer and conversation meeting of Catholic and Protestant clergyman in Erlenbach in Switzerland; from the still existing Groupe des Dombes developed. 1937/38, he met in England leading representatives of the Anglican Church. In magazine articles he contributed to the "universal prayer of Christians for Christian unity " one. In 1939 he met Willem Visser 't Hooft, who was in 1948 the first Secretary General of the World Council of Churches. In 1940 he met in Lyon Roger Schutz, who presented his plan of a Protestant monastic community in Taizé.

In 1942 the first edition of Pages documentaires, which later became the magazine Unité chrétienne emerged. In it, he developed the idea of an "invisible monastery " in which Christians of all denominations are united in prayer for unity.

April 12, 1942 to June 12, 1944 Couturier - probably because of his relations to England - held in custody by the Gestapo in Fort Montluc.

After the war, Couturier sat in meetings and publications remain committed to the deepening of ecumenical dialogue.

On April 11, 1952 Maximos IV Sayegh him, Melkite Patriarch of Antioch, the title archimandrite awarded.

Paul Couturier was buried in the Cimetière de Loyasse in Lyon.

2003 Footbridge Saint -Georges was renamed on the Saône in Passerelle Paul Couturier in Lyon.