Brother Roger

Roger Schütz, popularly known as Brother Roger (French: Frère Roger; Provence, Switzerland, May 12, 1915 – Taizé, August 16, 2005), was a Swiss Christian leader and monastic. In 1940 Schütz founded the Taizé Community, an ecumenical monastic community in Burgundy, France. He served as the community's first prior until his murder in 2005. Towards the end of his life the Taizé Community was attracting international attention, welcoming thousands of young pilgrims every week, which it has continued to do after his death.

Background

He was born Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche, the ninth and youngest child of Karl Ulrich Schütz, a Protestant pastor from Bachs in the Zürcher Unterland in Switzerland, and his wife, Amélie Henriette Marsauche, a Huguenot from Burgundy, France.

From 1937 to 1940, Schütz-Marsauche studied Reformed theology in Strasbourg and Lausanne, where he was a leader in the Swiss Student Christian Movement, part of the World Student Christian Federation. Falling ill with tuberculosis, during his convalescence he began to feel drawn to a monastic way of life.<ref name=TC /