Eastern Europeans Flock to Taize, Religious Retreat Nestled in France

Vladimir Lubaschevsky and his wife, Natalia, traveled three days by train from Moscow to reach a new world of “love and freedom” in Taize.

“We have found here quite another life,” the 38-year-old engineer said shyly, clutching a dog-eared Bible in one hand and Natalia’s elbow in the other. “It is fantastic for us.”

It is a dramatic contrast: the officially atheist Soviet Union, where they share a bleak apartment with his mother, and this liberal religious community nestled in the hills of Burgundy, about 230 miles southeast of Paris.

The Lubaschevskys are among tens of thousands of newly free East Europeans descending this year on Taize, a cross between summer camp and ecumenical seminary.

Taize observed its 50th birthday Sept. 1 and Cardinal Albert Decourtray of Lyon conducted a special service.

For many people who live here, the arrival of the East Europeans is a greater event than the anniversary.

“It’s very moving to know what some of them have come through,” said Brother John, a 38-year-old American. “Here, you’re a Christian and it’s no big deal. In East Germany, it meant a guy had to give up his job.”

Taize is a fraternity of 90 monks, most of them clad in sandals and slacks, who hope to reconcile the human family and overcome divisions among Christians through common prayer.

Their ideas are a powerful beacon that draws more than 100,000 visitors a year to share prayer, discussion, song and silence.

Brother Roger, 75, founded the community during World War II and still leads it.

He is a Swiss Protestant, a mystic who loves Bach and tea, and likes his Christianity simple. He will cross out whole sections of a text by St. Augustine to make the essential message easier to grasp.

“John XXIII was the Pope who understood us the best,” said Brother Roger, who has known them all since Pius XII. “He was a man of great simplicity and sensitivity.”

Both are embodied in Taize.

Visitors sleep in tents. Three times a day, they sit on all-weather carpet in the Church of Reconciliation to pray. In a region known for wine, tripe sausage and escargot, they eat green beans and pears.

The monks keep an open ear to anxieties, hoping to turn individual suffering into compassion.

“The brothers offer us a chance to take part in their prayers, their work, which is very important to me,” said Andrea Hegedus, 25, of Budapest.

“This would have been expropriated by the communists” in Eastern Europe, she said, because “coming together was a privilege held by the party.”

An estimated 2 million pilgrims have visited Taize in its half-century, including Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Pope John XXIII. Pope John Paul II visited as cardinal of Krakow in 1968 and pontiff in 1986.

Most visitors are aged 17-25, recognizable by backpacks and faded jeans. Some hitchhike and others arrive at the tiny railroad station. Shuttle buses run from several Polish cities.

Mary Tyminska, 16, arrived on a bus from Czem with 40 other teen-agers. Some immediately tried to hitch rides to Paris, but Mary stayed behind.

“Everyone is so happy here,” she said. “They treat you like brothers or sisters.”

In 1940, Roger Schuutz pedaled his bicycle from Switzerland into unoccupied France and bought a run-down house in Taize as the home for what he envisioned as a simple community of monks dedicated to prayer and meditation.

Then as now, Taize was affiliated with no church and did not accept donations. Brother Roger refused his inheritance, following the example of his mother, who refused too.

The monks support themselves with a crafts shop, where they sell articles they make. Visitors pay for meals and sleeping space in a tent.

In 1942, the Gestapo chased Brother Roger to Geneva after learning he had helped Jews escape France. He returned after the Allied invasion and conducted services for German prisoners of war in the 13th-Century village church.

Young people started coming to Taize in the late 1950s. The brothers built a spacious, modern church to hold them. The annual pilgrimage grew to 100,000 in the 1970 and the brothers expanded the church’s capacity with circus tents.

“We didn’t ever want it,” Brother Roger said, but his monks adapted, organizing food and lodging for their guests and composing multilingual chants to break down language barriers.

Some brothers now live part of the year in North and South America, Africa and Asia to expand contact between Christians.

“We first started making contacts in Eastern Europe in 1962, when we had a German brother who said we must go there to express our humanity,” said Brother Emile, a Canadian.

The revolution in Eastern Europe means many who dreamed of visiting Taize can do so. More than half the pilgrims this year are from the region.

“Here, we feel a unity in faith and being together,” Lubaschevsky said. “Here, it is approved to have more love and freedom than we ever had before.”