Prior of Taizé to step down, names Brit as successor

Brother Alois Löser, prior of the Taizé Community the past nearly two decades, has announced that he’s stepping down as leader of the world renown ecumenical monastery in France that was founded by the late Brother Roger Schutz. 

In a message on July 23 to the community, the 69-year-old prior – a German Catholic – said he has chosen Brother Matthew Thorpe, a 58-year old Anglican from England as his successor. 

"Eighteen years after having succeeded Brother Roger, and as the world and the Church have changed so much over the last two decades, I feel that the time has come for a brother who joined our community after me to take over my responsibility," said Brother Alois, who has been prior of Taizé since 2005.

The announcement of the resignation, which will officially take place on December 3, was completely unexpected since the post of prior is without a term limit. Brother Roger was Taizé’s prior from 1941 when he founded the community until his tragic murder in 2005.

“I have been thinking about this for several years now, and I spoke to all the brothers about it two years ago so that they could initiate the reflection,” Brother Alois told La Croix.

“I felt the need to bring the community into a new stage of its existence. The Church and the world are changing so much that I wondered: What is the Gospel calling us to do today?” he explained.

The delicate task of succeeding Roger Schutz

Brother Alois was just  20 years old in 1974 when he joined the Taizé Community. When Brother Roger was murdered during a prayer vigil in 2005, he had the difficult and delicate mission of filling the huge shoes of the charismatic founder who, eight years earlier, had designated Alois as his successor for when the time came.

Before becoming prior, Brother Alois was in charge of relations with Eastern Europe. In the 1980s, he was regularly on the other side of the Iron Curtain, visiting Christian communities in East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia… so many countries where Taizé has acquired an immense prestige through its presence throughout painful times. 

As soon as the Berlin Wall came down, young people from Eastern Europe flocked to the European Meetings that Taizé organized each New Year’s Eve in a different city on the continent.

Brother Alois devoted a great deal of time listening to and accompanying young people, an attentiveness he has maintained throughout his tenure as prior.

"Without being subjected to an emergency situation"

Regarding Taizé’s change of leadership, he has always insisted that it would be important to "prepare for this transition without being subjected to an emergency situation". Does this reflect the influence of Benedict XVI, his fellow German who resigned from the papacy? While Brother Alois says he "admired his decision to retire in 2013", he assured us that it "did not influence" his own decision.

He also said his decision to step down as prior is not linked to the revelations of sexual abuse within the community that came to light a few years ago. A brother of Taizè was arrested on October 18, 2019. He was brought before an examining magistrate and remanded in custody on charges of rape and sexual assault.

"No, there is no direct link. But it's true that receiving the word of people who have been victims of sexual and spiritual abuse by brothers has shaped my role as prior in recent years," Brother Alois said.

"Thanks to them, we have begun a whole process of revisiting our vocation as brothers and improving our protective measures, so that Taizé is a safe place for the young people who come here. All this has undoubtedly weighed on my mind and I think that, in this area too, a new prior should now continue this work that has been started," he said.

The need to consult all the brothers

The change of leadership is significant for Taizé. Brother Alois, known as a man of listening and speaking, represented a form of continuity with Brother Roger.

He has retained the founder’s major thoughts from the beginning, while developing the brothers' presence beyond Taizé’s “mother house”, as it were, in the hills of Burgundy and setting up small communities of brothers all over the world. While Taizé’s rule simply states that "the prior appoints a brother to ensure continuity after him", Alois said he felt "the need to consult all the brothers before deciding who would be the new prior".

But after "prayer and reflection" with the community, it was he who chose Brother Matthew as his successor. The new prior was born in 1965 in the market town of Pudsey in Leeds (West Yorkshire) and was baptized into the Church of England as Andrew Thorpe. He joined the Taizé Community at age of 21 and took the monastic name Mathew.

Brother Alois said this "alternation of denominational affiliation from one prior to the next" is "an important sign" that underlines the community leader’s vocation to seek Christian unity, and even to be, "according to the vision of its founder, a 'little parable of communion'".

The handover will take place on December 3, the 1st Sunday of Advent, following several major events for the Taizé Community. The first of those is the large ecumenical prayer vigil St. Peter’s Square in Rome that Pope Francis asked the community to organize. It will take place on September 30, just days before the Synod assembly on the future of the Church. The pope has also invited Brother Alois to take part in the month-long gathering of Catholic bishops and lay people.

The  Taizé Community currently numbers about 100 brothers of 30 nationalities who come from Catholic and Protestant traditions. Around 75 of them live at Taizé, while another 25 or so are part of the seven fraternities located in Asia, Africa and Latin America.