Louis Augros

Louis Augros (born February 20, 1898 in Belmont-de-la-Loire , † April 15, 1982 in Vernaison ) was a French Roman Catholic clergyman, founding superior of the Mission de France and instructor of the labor priests .

Life

Origin. Priest. Seminar leader

Louis Augros grew up in a rural environment 25 km northwest of Roanne . After graduating from high school, he attended the seminary in Lyon from 1916 , made war and military service from 1917 to 1920 and was ordained a priest in Lyon in 1924. After further theological training in the St. Sulpice seminary in Issy-les-Moulineaux , he taught philosophy in Orléans from 1925 to 1928 and in Issy-les-Moulineaux from 1928 to 1935. From 1935 he was head of the seminary in Autun .

Mission de France

In 1941, Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard commissioned him to build up the new evangelization decided by the French bishops under the name Mission de France of those regions and parts of the population (especially the peasant and working class) that had been de- Christianized since the French Revolution . Augros set up a seminary in Lisieux (in spiritual contact with St. Therese von Lisieux , mediated by her sister Pauline Martin , who was still active there as prioress ), whose candidates were specially trained for popular missions . He headed the seminary until his recall in 1952, but first had to recruit candidates by attending 60 French seminaries, which he succeeded. He also benefited from the fact that mission structures already existed unofficially, e.g. B. the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne . JOC ( Young Christian Workers . CAJ), by Émile Anizan founded Sons of Charity to Georges Michonneau (1899-1983) in Petit-Colombes that of Antoine Chevrier was founded in Lyon Prado Institute or from Madeleine Delbrêl and companions in Ivry done Social work. What a bombshell did the study La France, pays de mission, commissioned by Cardinal Suhard , look like? (Lyon 1943) by Henri Godin (1906–1944) and Yvan Daniel (1909–1986), who relentlessly showed the gap between the church and the broad masses (workers and peasants). By the end of the war, the seminar led by Augros had 50 seminarians.

The way to recall

On April 12, 1952 Augros was recalled by Bishop Achille Liénart (Suhard had died in 1949) and the seminary in Lisieux was dissolved. To understand the motives, one has to realize that the vast majority of French bishops thought conservatively and had come to terms with the Vichy regime from 1940 onwards. When, after the liberation of France in 1944, political power lay in the hands of the Resistance, and thus essentially with the Gaullists and the Communists, the high clergy were compromised. In contrast, the workers' mission led to the phenomenon of worker priests (around 100 in 1952), who in numerous cases sided with the trade unions and the Communist Party. In this situation, the attitude of Pope Pius XII was of crucial importance. and its curia. But Rome was even more conservative than the bishops and, above all, panicked by anti-communism. The eminent theologians Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu who supported the Mission de France were silenced by Rome. The growing propensity of mission priests to engage as worker priests, promoted by Augros, led to the condemnation of communism in Pius XII in 1950. Encyclical Humani Generis and the Prohibition of Worker Priests. Ultimately, it was pressure from Rome that led to Augros being recalled because Rome strictly opposed a kind of church reform from below, outside of the traditional church structures.

The further way of life

After his replacement at the age of 54, Augros no longer appeared prominently. From 1952 to 1954 he was local pastor in Givors south of Lyon, from January 1955 pastor in Souq Ahras (Roman Tagaste, birthplace of Augustine of Hippo ) in Algeria . Hans Küng met him there by chance . Since he refused to deny the Algerian rebels Christian charity, the French administration forced him to give up the parish. From mid-May 1956 to October 1957 he was a pastor in the Bab El Oued district in Algiers . Then he went to Tunisia for almost 20 years, first to Kairouan and from 1970 to Tunis . In 1976 he went to a nursing home in Lay near Roanne as an institution priest . His 80th birthday in 1978 led to great festivities in Fontenay-sous-Bois and Lisieux, where five bishops (including Albert Decourtray ) and 150 priests celebrated a mass with him, which was tantamount to rehabilitation. He died in 1982 in a retirement home (he had been living in since January) in Vernaison near Lyon at the age of 84.

The trauma

Augros left an extensive correspondence that Jean Vinatier used in his biography. It shows that Augros, who had what it takes to be a bishop, adopted an attitude like Balzac's Colonel Chabert in 1952 , that is, total withdrawal into anonymity. He compared himself to Charles de Gaulle in Colombey les Deux Églises . He accused Cardinal Liénart, who only died in 1973 and who recalled him in 1952, that he had never given him a word of regret or appreciation.

Quote

From a letter to his seminarians dated June 12, 1952, two months after his recall:

“La Mission, c'est l'Evangile annoncé aux pauvres (Lc 4, 16-20). Par conséquent toute notre vie doit être polarisée par les pauvres. C'est à eux que le Seigneur nous envoie; à eux que notre vie doit être consacrée. Aux pauvres, c'est-à-dire aux déshérités de la vie; à ceux qui sont écrasés par ce monde major dans lequel nous vivons; à ceux qui ne joignent pas les deux bouts, à qui il manque toutours de quoi atteindre la fin du mois, ou la fin de l'année; qui, malgré un travail major, n'arrivent pas à s'en sortir; et surtout à ceux qui sont plus pauvres encore, tombés plus bas, ayant perdu toute dignité humaine, toute place dans la société des hommes; les clochards, les délinquants, les filles perdues, etc. »

(The target group of our evangelization are the poor (Luke 4: 16-20). Therefore our whole life must be directed towards the poor. The Lord sends us to them; our lives must be consecrated to them. The poor, ie the disadvantaged in life; who are trampled underfoot by the harsh world in which we live; who do not have enough to live in and cannot get by until the end of the month; who have to starve despite hard work; and above all those who are still poorer, those who have fallen even deeper, who lose all human dignity have lost any place in human society; the homeless, the delinquents, the prostitutes, etc. )

(Source: Jean Vinatier: Le père Louis Augros. Premier supérieur de la Mission de France 1898–1982 . Cerf, Paris 1991, p. 63)

Works

• La Mission de France . Lettre-préface de Son Eminence le Cardinal Suhard. Annales de Ste Thérèse de Lisieux, Lisieux 1941, 1945.
• (Afterword) Madeleine Delbrêl: Nous autres, gens des rues. Textes missionnaires . Seuil, Paris 1966, 1971, 1995 (introduction by Jacques Loew ).
• De l'Église d'hier à l'Église de demain. L'aventure de la Mission de France . Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1980 (preface by Marie-Dominique Chenu).

literature

• Jean Vinatier: Le père Louis Augros. Premier supérieur de la Mission de France 1898–1982 . Cerf, Paris 1991.

Web links

• Short biography , French
• Information on Louis Augros in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about Louis Augros in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Freedom fought for. Memories, Piper, Munich 2004, p. 147