A healer of divisions.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The murder of a spiritual leader is always an occasion for dismay, but last week's killing of Brother Roger, the 90-year-old Swiss Protestant monk who founded the Taize community and movement, is doubly shocking. Brother Roger had never sought personal authority; he gathered influence almost in spite of himself. His killing furthers no political agenda and advances no cause. The apparently deranged woman who stabbed him did nothing but add to an already heavy burden of sadness.

The Taize community in France is small, but its style of spirituality - at once mystical and practical, with a minimum of dogma and emphasizing peace, unity and reconciliation - has been widely influential. Taize prayer groups meet throughout the world, including in Eugene. Part of the appeal is that Brother Roger never sought to place himself at the head of a movement, saying that "My brothers and I want to be seen as people who listen, never as spiritual masters."

It may seem incongruous to compare such a man to the pope, the ultimate in authority figures. Yet in many ways Brother Roger's life and work paralleled that of Pope John Paul II, who preceded him in death this year and had also been a killer's target. Both worked to counter secularism, particularly among the young. Both opposed Germany's Nazi regime, Brother Roger by sheltering Jews and resistance fighters. Both helped undermine Soviet communism, Brother Roger by organizing prayer groups in Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Both strived for unity among religions - the Taize community in eastern France includes Lutherans, Anglicans, evangelical Christians, Catholics and adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Brother Roger's killing came as Pope Benedict XVI was making his first trip abroad since his elevation to the papacy four months ago, traveling to Cologne in his native Germany for World Youth Day. Brother Roger was instrumental in organizing World Youth Day, creating the platform for Benedict's international debut.

This was apparently a senseless murder - as opposed to an assassination, which requires some discernible political or doctrinal motive, however twisted it may be. Brother Roger might have seen the senselessness of his death as a reflection of the human condition, in which people are alienated from the grace of God. Those who remain can only console themselves with the thought that despite its cruelties and injustices, the modern world succeeds in occasionally offering up such a man as Brother Roger.