“Father, our lives are already given”

On December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, nineteen martyrs will be beatified in Oran. Among them, the Brothers of the monastic community of Tibhirine and a Marist Brother, Henri Vergès. 

Their lives were taken at the same time as thousands  of their Algerian brothers and sisters who also lost their lives, choosing to remain and died faithful to their faith in God, to their conscience and love of their country. 144 Imans died because they refused to justify violence. 

Shortly before her death, Sister Paul-Hélène said : "Father, our lives are already given."  Their lives were given to God and the people to whom they had been linked in love.

The Church offers them to our world as models for our discipleship today and tomorrow. Blessed are those who before us, on the path to the testimony that the Church is called to testify in Algeria which, from the first century, was irrigated with the blood of the martyrs. 

Now we can ask for the intercession of those martyrs. Because, as Blessed, they continue their mission, associated more than ever with the work of the Lord. 

At the celebration of the Beatification, the Institute will be represented by Brother Ernesto Sánchez, Superior General, Brother Antonio Martínez Estaún, Postulator of the Institute, Brother Pere Ferre, Provincial of the Hermitage, Brother Ángel Medina, deputy director of the Secretariat of Brothers Today, accompanied by the Brothers from Africa, by other Brothers of the Province of l'Hermitage and the relatives of Brother Henri Vergès.