Olive Danzé

Olive Danzé (born March 27, 1906 in Plogoff ; † May 2, 1968 ibid) was a French Benedictine , mystic and stigmatized .

life and work

Appearances in childhood

Olive Danzé grew up as the ninth of eleven children of poor people in the far west of Brittany (where the mystic Marie-Julie Jahenny, 1850–1941, also lived). From the age of five, Olive claims to have had numerous apparitions of Jesus as private revelations . The Jesus who appeared to her showed himself at the appropriate age for her, predicted that she would become his wife ( épouse ) and revealed herself in 1916 as the Sacred Heart of Jesus . In 1920 the Virgin Mary appeared to her and asked her to come to the Benedictine Sisters of the Most Holy Sacrament in the Rue Tournefort in Paris in order to repent on behalf of the disrespect that was everywhere shown for the divine presence in the Host, and for the people Bringing the kingship of Christ close ( Tu feras aimer sa Royauté ) and helping Jesus to rule ( Tu Le feras régner ).

Entry to the Paris monastery

The girl, who stopped aging physically at the age of 15 and continued to play with dolls, entered the convent on Rue Tournefort on August 14, 1926, a few months after Pope Pius XI. on December 11, 1925, in the encyclical Quas primas (on French initiative) the feast of Christ the King had been used. According to the postulate and the Oblate period, she was dressed as a Benedictine on June 7, 1928 and took the religious name Marie du Christ-Roi (Mary of Christ-King). The anniversary of her death, August 15, 1928, which Jesus had promised her, did not come true. After the novitiate, she made temporary profession on June 12, 1929.

Jesus as Christ the King

In the monastery, she regularly experienced ecstasies in which Jesus asked her to suffer vicariously. The monastery confessor stated that she was stigmatized. She insisted on fulfilling the wish of Jesus appearing to her and building a church to be consecrated to "Christ the King, Prince of Peace and Lord of the Nations" ( Christ-Roi. Prince de la paix. Maître des nations ). Accompanied by her apparition of Jesus, she was allowed to regularly collect donations outside the monastery. In the years 1927–1928 the Jesus who appeared to her insisted on his kingship, also called himself King of France and called France the "dear fatherland that I love so dearly" ( la belle patrie, tant aimée de mon coeur ). He dictated a prayer of Christ the King to her, which is still occasionally prayed today, and threatened divine wrath in the event that his kingship was not recognized and prayer and penance were refused. He described the age as dark and empty ( obscur et vide ) and promised to send plagues to destroy the "méchants, âmes critiques, blasphémateurs, profanateurs, menteurs et joueurs". She was asked several times by Jesus to pray for Charles Maurras , the head of Action française , which on September 5, 1926 by Pius XI. had been condemned ( repealed by Pius XII in 1939 ).

Eviction and return

Archbishop Louis-Ernest Dubois , who was well disposed to the work of Olive Danzé and had obtained permission to build the church in Rome, died in 1929. Auxiliary Bishop Eugène-Jacques Crépin (1861–1942) used his agony to remove Sister Maria von Christ -King to dispose of the monastery. During this exile, which lasted until November 11, 1934, she stayed in the monasteries Mas-Grenier , Jouarre , Tourcoing , Arras , as well as with the Franciscan Sisters. In Tourcoing and Arras it was under the protection of Cardinal Achille Liénart . Thanks to Cardinal Verdier , she was allowed to return to the Paris monastery and stayed there until 1941. The perpetual profession was not made, as Verdier also died prematurely in 1940.

Construction of the Christ the King Church

Their return promoted the building of the church called for by Jesus, which was built from 1935 to 1940 by the architect Jules-Godefroy Astruc (1862–1955) in the inner courtyard of the monastery. Most of the donations came from Ireland, as the monastery had relationships with Archbishop John Charles McQuaid (1895–1973), a temporary neighbor, and Éamon de Valera, and received support from the Dublin-based Joseph Sisters of Cluny.

Final expulsion in 1941. Visit to Pius XII. 1953

Verdier's successor, Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard , ordered the final exile of Sister Maria von Christ-König in 1941 (on the advice of Cathedral Chapter Pierre Brot, 1892–1971). Thereupon the monastery superior wrote to the Pope for help. On October 4, 1941, Cardinal Suhard appeared in the monastery with Canon Bread, deposed the superior (who died five days later) and appointed a sister hostile to the mystic as superior. Her order to have Maria examined by Christ-König for a psychiatric examination was prevented by the majority of the sisters.

The mystic was forced to set off for Rome on November 2, 1941 with two companions, an undertaking that was impossible at the time. The three sisters therefore spent the period from 1941 to 1953 in various houses open to them in the Paris region. After the war they went to Ireland twice and were received there with all honors by the donors of the Christ the King Church in Paris. Then they traveled to the Pope and were received in a private audience on November 14, 1953 in Castelgandolfo. There Sister Maria von Christ-König made her perpetual profession in the hands of the Pope. His attempt to get her rehabilitation in the Paris monastery failed.

Epilogue in Agay, Plogoff and Paris

On their way back from Rome, the three Benedictine nuns settled in Agay , a district of Saint-Raphaël , and stayed there from 1954 to 1958. They traveled several times to the Camaldolese convent founded by Emma Tirelli (with the sanctuary of the Immaculate Sorrowful Heart of Mary) in La Seyne-sur-Mer . After the death of Pius XII. The small community of sisters moved to Olive Danzé's hometown of Plogoff, where the mystic (thanks to the support of her family) and her companions led a meager life for 10 years and died on May 2, 1968. The last surviving exile companion, Sister Marie-Cécile, died in 1998. In Paris, the Christ the King's Church, which was elevated to a basilica in 1956, was demolished in 1977 after the monastery had to be abandoned in 1975 for lack of children.

Reception history

Olive Danzé wrote down her apparitions from memory (with the handwriting of an adult) in notebooks. The former Japan missionary (1949-1983) Joseph-Marie Jacq (1922-1991), Bretons like Olive Danzé, witness of the apparition of Mary in Akita (1973), about which he had published, dealt with the existing documents from 1987 onwards, published about it in Japan, but died in 1991 before completing his French-speaking work. Henri-Pierre Bourcier, a specialist in the mystic Marie-Julie Jahenny, used the estate for his 1992 publication, in which the mystic's writings comprise more than 200 printed pages. Both sources were summarized in 2001 by Jean-Baptiste Roussot in a new book. The Catholic Church has so far avoided any official statement on the Olive Danzé case.

literature

• Henri-Pierre Bourcier (* 1905): La messagère du Christ-Roi. Sœur Olive . Résiac, Montsûrs 1992.
• Jean-Baptiste Roussot: La colombe de France. La vie et la mission de sœur Marie du Christ-Roi . Résiac, Montsûrs 2001.

Web links

• Information on Olive Danzé in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about Olive Danzé in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Roussot p. 43; Bourcier p. 48