Pope Francis Meets Last Survivor of Tibhirine Massacre During Morocco Visit

As reported by AFP, and immortalized by numerous cameras, the sovereign pontiff stood up to greet and kiss the hand of the religious man who now moves around in a wheelchair.

After leaving Tibhirine in 2000, he settled with Trappist monks at the Notre-Dame de l’Atlas monastery in Midelt, in the center of the country, the same source specifies. "It’s very important, it remains a memory," Father Schumacher simply told AFP.

To recall, in the night of March 26 to 27, 1996, seven Trappist monks had been murdered under still very unclear circumstances. They had been kidnapped from their Notre-Dame de l’Atlas monastery, on the heights of Médéa, in Algeria, and their severed heads had been found on a road several weeks later.

Father Jean-Pierre Schumacher had met Pope John Paul II in the past. "I was invited to present myself before the pope, John Paul II was already very tired, I was kneeling before him, he bent down to kiss me" and "I understood that he did not know who I was," he says, recalling the memory.