1. Jean-Marie Lustiger served as Archbishop of Paris from 1981 until his resignation in 2005.
61 Facts About Jean-Marie Lustiger
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was made a cardinal in 1983 by Pope John Paul II.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger's life is depicted in the 2013 film Le metis de Dieu.
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Aron Jean-Marie Lustiger studied at the Lycee Montaigne in Paris, where he first encountered anti-Semitism.
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Sometime between the ages of ten and twelve, Jean-Marie Lustiger came across a Protestant Bible and felt inexplicably attracted to it.
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In March 1940, during Holy Week, the 13-year-old Jean-Marie Lustiger decided to convert to Catholicism.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger's father tried unsuccessfully to have his son's baptism annulled, and even sought the help of the chief rabbi of Paris.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger graduated from the Sorbonne with a literature degree in 1946.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger entered the seminary of the Carmelite fathers in Paris, and later the Institut Catholique de Paris.
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From 1969 to 1979, Jean-Marie Lustiger was vicar of the Parish of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal, in the wealthy 16th arrondissement of Paris.
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On 10 November 1979, Jean-Marie Lustiger was appointed Bishop of Orleans by Pope John Paul II after a 15-month vacancy.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger received his episcopal consecration on 8 December 1979 from Cardinal Francois Marty, with Archbishop Eugene Ernoult of Sens and Bishop Daniel Pezeril serving as co-consecrators.
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When installed as bishop, Jean-Marie Lustiger avoided all reference to his liberal predecessor Guy-Marie Riobe, a pacifist closely allied to Catholic Action.
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On 31 January 1981 Jean-Marie Lustiger was named Archbishop of Paris, succeeding Cardinal Marty.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger said that the position was being given to "someone who is not truly of French origin".
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was considered a first-rate communicator and he was a personal friend of Jean Gelamur, head of the Catholic media group Bayard Presse.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger founded KTO TV in 1999, which struggled financially.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger founded a new seminary for training priests, bypassing the existing arrangements.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was considered, primarily by his critics, to be authoritarian, earning him the nickname of "Bulldozer".
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Jean-Marie Lustiger deposed the vicars general Michel Guittet and Pierre Gervaise, had Georges Gilson transferred to Le Mans and Emile Marcus to Nantes, personally headed the meetings of the episcopal council, and made numerous other changes.
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In October 1981, the French bishops elected the more liberal Jean-Felix-Albert-Marie Vilnet as President of the Episcopal Conference, with whom Jean-Marie Lustiger was on difficult terms throughout his life.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger participated in the annual meeting of the movement Comunione e Liberazione in Rimini in summer 1982.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was incardinated Cardinal-Priest of Santi Marcellino e Pietro by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 2 February 1983, at the same time as the Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was considered papabile, or eligible for election as pope.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger carried out several reforms in the Archdiocese of Paris concerning priests' training, creating in 1984 an independent theological faculty in the Ecole cathedrale de Paris, distinct from the Catholic University of Paris aka Institut Catholique de Paris.
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Strongly attached to the ideal of priestly celibacy, Jean-Marie Lustiger used his position as Ordinary for Orientals to prevent the deployment of married Eastern Rite Catholic priests in France.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger favoured development of a permanent diaconate, to be filled mainly by married men involved in the workplace.
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In 1984, Jean-Marie Lustiger led a mass rally at Versailles in opposition to the Savary Law, which reduced state aid to private education.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was seen to surpass his comrades Jean Vilnet, Paul Guiberteau and Jean Honore, who were leaders on the issue.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger supported the 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State, but, when testifying before the Commission Stasi on secularism, he opposed the 2004 French law on secularity, which limited conspicuous religious symbols in schools.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger had his right-hand man, Andre Vingt-Trois, appointed bishop in 1988.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger developed rather good working relations with Francois Mitterrand's Socialist government, despite their political disagreements.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger deposed the priest Alain Maillard de La Morandais from his diplomatic functions toward the political sphere, as he considered him to be too pro-Balladur during the 1995 presidential campaign.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger sought to identify and conciliate rising national elites in politics and communication.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was less amenable to initiatives from non-French Catholic groups or individuals.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was never elected as head of the Conference des eveques de France by his peers, with whom he was not popular.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was elected a member of the Academie francaise in 1995, succeeding Albert Decourtray and bypassing Cardinal Paul Poupard.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger upheld papal authority in theology and morals: "There are opinions and there is faith," he said in 1997.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger founded the Non-Governmental Organization Tiberiade to attend to AIDS patients.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger considered Christianity to be the accomplishment of Judaism, and the New Testament to be the logical continuation of the Old Testament.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was influential in the appointment of his moderate conciliar auxiliary Georges Gilson to the See of Le Mans, replacing senior clergy with men who shared similar views to his own.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger pursued ecumenism but gave a critical address on Anglicanism when welcoming Archbishop Robert Runcie to Notre Dame.
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In 1995, Jean-Marie Lustiger played a key role in deposing the liberal bishop of Evreux, Jacques Gaillot, who was then transferred to the titular see of Partenia.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was strongly critical of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, comparing Le Pen's xenophobic views to Nazism.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger incurred the hostility of some in the Spanish Church because he strongly opposed the project to canonize Queen Isabella I of Castile.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger's opposition was due to the fact that Isabella and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon had expelled Jews from her domains in 1492.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger had a Polish background and staunchly upheld the Pope's conservative views in the face of much hostility from liberal Catholic opinion in France.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger said he was proud of his Jewish origins and described himself as a "fulfilled Jew", for which he was chastised by Christians and Jews alike.
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Lau accused Jean-Marie Lustiger of betraying the Jewish people by converting to Catholicism, alongside another rabbi who accused him of causing more harm than Adolf Hitler by converting to Christianity.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger, who claimed that he was still a Jew, considered being "Jewish" as an ethnic designation and not exclusively a religious one.
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Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger gained recognition after negotiating in 1987 with representatives of the organized Jewish community the departure of the Carmelite nuns who built a convent in Auschwitz concentration camp.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger represented Pope John Paul II in January 2005 during the 60th-year commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz camp by the Allies.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger was in Birkenau along with the new Pope Benedict XVI in May 2006.
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In 1995, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger attended the reading of an act of repentance with a group of French rabbis, during which Catholic authorities apologized for the French Church's passive attitude towards the collaborationism policies enacted by the Vichy regime during World War II.
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In 1998, Jean-Marie Lustiger was awarded the Nostra Aetate Award for advancing Catholic-Jewish relations by the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, an interfaith group housed on the campus of Sacred Heart University, a Catholic university at Fairfield, Connecticut, in the United States.
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The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, protested the award, saying it was "inappropriate" to honor Jean-Marie Lustiger, who was born a Jew but left the faith.
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In 2004 and 2006, Jean-Marie Lustiger visited New York and included visits to the Bobover Rebbe, Yeshiva University, JTSA, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah where he addressed the students and faculty along with fellow visiting European bishops.
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When Jean-Marie Lustiger reached the age of 75 on 17 September 2001, he submitted his resignation as Archbishop of Paris to Pope John Paul II, as required by canon law.
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Jean-Marie Lustiger died on 5 August 2007 at a clinic outside Paris where he had been battling bone and lung cancer since April.
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The funeral, presided over by Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger's successor, was held at Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 August 2007.