Aaron Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger

An Anomaly

   

Cardinal Lustiger was born Aaron Lustiger in Paris, France to Ashkenazi Jews from Bedzin.  Charles and Gisele Lustiger left Poland approximately around World War I.  Aaron's father ran a hosiery shop.  They were not religious Jews but Jews nevertheless.  Aaron studied in France at Lycee Montaigne in Paris, where he first encountered anti-semitism. He visited Germany in 1937 where he was hosted by an anti-Nazi Protestant family whose children had been coerced to join the Hitler Jugend (Youth).

Between ages of ten and twelve Lustiger was attracted to a Protestant Bible.  In March of 1940 the thirteen year old Lustiger decided to convert to Roman Catholicism.  In August of that year he was baptized as Aaron Jean-Marie by the Bishop of Orleans, Jules Marie Courcoux.  His sister converted later.  In October 1940, the Vichy regime passed the first Statute on Jews, which forced Jews to wear a yellow badge.  Aaron’s parents had to wear a badge which identified them as Jews. Lustiger in the meanwhile was hidden in Orleans.

Lustiger, with his father and sister, later sought refuge in unoccupied southern France, while his mother returned to Paris to run the family business.  In September of 1942 his mother was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and died the following year.  After the war the surviving family returned to Paris.  Lustiger’s father attempted unsuccessfully to have Aaron’s baptism annulled.

Lustiger graduated from the Sorbonne with a degree in literature in 1946.  He then entered the seminary of the Carmelite fathers in Paris, and later the Institut Catholique de Paris.  From 1954 to 1959 he was the Chaplain at the Sorbonne and for the next ten years the director of Richelieu Centre, which trains university chaplains and receives lay teachers  and students for counsel.  From 1969 to 1979 he was vicar of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal in Paris.  This all came, of course, after his ordination to the priesthood on April 17, 1954.

On November 10, 1979, Lustiger was appointed by John Paul II Bishop of Orleans after a fifteen month vacancy.  He was promoted on January 31, 1981, to bishop of Paris.  He had been supported  by a letter from Andre Frossard  to John Paul II.  The Archbishop and founder of the Traditionalist Catholic group Society of St.  Pius X, Marcel Lefebvre, criticized this nomination, complaining that the function was given to someone who is not truly of French origin.  Lustiger’s nomination was seen as a defeat by the French clergy who supported the Second Vatican Council.

Lustiger was a first rate communicator who was particularly attentive to the media and developed Catholic radio and television channels.  Lustiger also created a new seminary for the training of priests, bypassing existing arrangements.  He was considered quite an authoritarian, which earned him the name of “bulldozer”.

Lustiger, like all senior prelates appointed by Pope John Paul II, upheld papal authority in areas of theology.  He was a strong believer in priestly celibacy and opposed abortion and the ordination of  women.  He considered Christianity to be the accomplishment of Judaism and the New Testament to be the logical continuation of the Old Testament. Lustiger did not align himself with the Traditionalist Catholics.

Lustiger was an outspoken opponent of racism and anti-Semitism. He was quoted as stating that “The Christian faith says that all men are equal in dignity because they are all created in the image of God”. Lustiger considered himself Jewish all of his life.  He said that he was proud of his Jewish heritage and described himself as a “fulfilled” Jew, for which he was mercilessly chastised by Christian and Jews alike.  Although he was accused of betraying the Jewish people by his conversion to Catholicism, Lustiger’s strong support of Israel was laudable, especially since it conflicted with the Vatican’s officially neutral position.

On becoming Archbishop of Paris, Lustiger said:  “I was born Jewish and so I remain even if that is unacceptable for many.  For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim.  That is my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means of achieving it.” His life was a series of contradictions, which reminds one of the old cliché:  “Wenn ein dicker Jyd nach Durrgoi geht”.

Lustiger died on August 5, 2007, at age 80.  He wrote his own epitaph:

 

“I WAS BORN JEWISH

I  RECEIVED THE NAME

OF MY PATERNAL GRANDFATHER, AARON

HAVING BECOME CHRISTIAN

BY FAITH AND BY BAPTISM,

I HAVE REMAINED JEWISH

AS DID THE APOSTLES

I HAVE AS MY PATRON SAINTS

AARON THE HIGH PRIEST

SAINT JOHN THE APOSTLE

HOLY MARY FULL OF GRACE.

NAMED 139^TH ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS

BY HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II

I WAS ENTHRONED IN THIS CATHEDRAL

ON 27 FEBRUARY 1981

AND HERE I EXERCISED MY ENTIRE MINISTERY

PASSERS-BY PRAY FOR ME.”

 

 Lehitraot.