Pierre Claverie

Pierre-Lucien Claverie, OP (8 May 1938 – 1 August 1996) was a French Catholic prelate who was a professed member from the Order of Preachers and served as the Bishop of Oran from 1981 until his murder in 1996 by Islamic extremists. He was committed to ecumenism and dialogue with the Islamic faith and dreamed of a peaceful co-existence with Muslims in an independent Algeria. He likewise was noted for his studies on Islamic culture and his mastering of classical Arabic which he even taught to those Muslims who understood the common popular language rather than its classical origins. Claverie was also a prolific writer on dialogue which he made the core focus of his episcopal life. Claverie's cause for canonization opened on 31 March 2007 as part of a larger group cause of other religious killed during the course of the Algerian Civil War. Pope Francis confirmed the group's beatification in 2018 and it was celebrated in Oran on 8 December 2018. Pierre-Lucien Claverie was born as a French citizen in 1938 in a working-class European part of Algiers known as Bab-el-Oued at the time of French Algeria. He was the fourth generation of French settlers and had Algeria as his home. He grew up in a nurturing environment that was raised in the faith but not all that pious. It was in 1948 that he joined a group of Scouts under the guidance of the Dominicans. Because of the danger, his mother and sister left the department of Alger just prior to independence in 1962 while his father left in February 1963 when he reached retirement. Once he completed his studies and earned his baccalauréat, he travelled to Grenoble in France in order to pursue his college education. There he was confronted with protests against the French presence in Algeria and realized the limitations of the French world in which he grew up which he later called "the colonial bubble". Claverie joined the Dominicans and started his novitiate at the convent in Lille on 7 December 1958 and made his initial vows the next December.