Jean Goss

Jean Goss (Caluire in France November 20, 1912 - Paris April 3, 1991) was a French nonviolent activist. The son of an opera baritone who lost his voice during the First World War, Jean Goss was forced to work beginning at the age of 12 in Paris, before being hired by a French railway Company in 1937. At 15, he joined a trade union. Mobilized in 1939, he participated in the Second World War. In June 1940, the night before his surrender to the German Army in Lille, he lived an overwhelming experience of God's love for him and for the whole of humanity. It would be the beginning of a lifelong commitment. As a war prisoner in German camps until 1945, he was sentenced to death but saved by a German officer who was moved by his testimony. At the end of the war, he was looking for clergymen in the Roman Catholic Church convinced of the absolute respect of Human life. In 1950, he forced the entrance of the Holy Office in Rome to meet Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. In 1948, he met the International Fellowship of Reconciliation in France and sent back to the French Ministry his military papers and his war medals in support of the conscientious objectors. Living in Arcueil, a city of Paris' suburb, he was active in social movements for housing and also in the railway trade unions. He was one of the leader of the 1953 strikes. He participated in several peace meetings in East Europe (Budapest 1953, Warsaw 1956, Moscow 1957, Prague 1958). In 1958, he married Hildegard Mayr. They have got two children, Etienne and Myriam. His life with Hildegard was committed to promote Christian active nonviolence. They were in Rome during the Council Vatican II lobbying for the recognition of the conscientious objection by the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1960s and 1970s, they lived for sometime in Brazil (1964–1965) and in Mexico (1970–1971). They co-organized two continental conferences on non-violence (Montevideo 1966, Medellín 1974), from which was born the SERPAJ (Servizio Paz y Justizia). Its first coordinator was Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980.