Jean-Baptiste Gourion OSB

He was educated in Oran before his family decided to immigrate to France. It was there that he met the figure of Jesus of Nazareth and was baptized on April 5, 1958 at the Benedictine Abbey of Bec Hellouin in Normandy, France. He began his studies at the university, registered as a student of natural sciences and medicine. However, he was obliged to do his military service in Algeria at the time of the war there. In 1961, he entered the Abbey of Bec Hellouin as a Benedictine monk and he took the name Brother Jean-Baptiste. In 1965 he made his perpetual profession and was ordained a priest on June 29, 1967.

It was in 1976 that Jean-Baptiste, together with two other brothers, was sent to Israel in order to establish there a community that would give expression to the Jewish roots of the Church and that would be open to the Jewish and Israeli worlds, in communion with the local church. The three monks settled in the medieval premises of a church in the Arab village of Abu Ghosh, just outside Jerusalem. Jean-Baptiste was superior of the community until 1987 when he was elected as the monastery’s first prior and he was re-elected in 1992 and 1998. From 1986 he also served as the General Chapter’s “definitor” (or visitor). In 1999, the monastery in Abu Ghosh was elevated to the status of Abbey and Jean-Baptiste became its first abbot.

On April 8, 1990, the new Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah (the first Palestinian named Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem) named Jean-Baptiste as his Vicar for the Hebrew speaking Catholics living in the territory of the Latin Patriarchate. From that time he was responsible for the pastoral work among the Hebrew-speaking Catholics, organized in four communities in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Beer Sheba and Haifa. Later, Jean-Baptiste appointed two priests to begin working with the Russian immigrants to Israel who were Catholic.

He received much recognition for his work and the witness of the monastery in Israel. In 1989 he received the Legion of Honor from the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roland Dumas. In 2002, he received the annual prize of the Jewish-Christian Friendship Association in France, bestowed on him in the precincts of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset).

On August 14, 2003, Pope John Paul II named Jean Baptiste as Auxiliary Bishop to the Latin Patriarch with special responsibility for the Hebrew speaking Catholics in the Holy Land. He was ordained on November 9, 2003 in the Church of Our Lady Ark of the Covenant in Kiryat Yearim, just above Abu Ghosh, by the Latin Patriarch assisted by the Nuncio, Msgr. Pietro Sambi and Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, the envoy of the Pope. At the end of the ordination ceremony, Jean Baptiste addressed the crowds and in Hebrew said: “Sof sof hazarnu habayita” – “At last we have returned home”.

A few months after the ordination, Jean-Baptiste was stricken down with malignant cancer. He passed away in 2005. His funeral mass was celebrated by the Patriarch amidst a crowd of priests and faithful on June 28, 2005 and he was buried in the Abbey in Abu Ghosh.

Jean-Baptiste Gourion ordained bishop in 2003

The coat of arms of Bishop Gourion

Patriarch Michel Sabbah ordains Jean-Baptiste Gourion

Bringing Jean-Baptiste Gourion to eternal rest, 2005

{rsg2_display: 6, slideshow_parth}