98 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT 3.2 TAIZÉ: REFORMED AND ECUMENICAL This section very briefly introduces the history of Taizé by articulating some characteristics of the community and its founder, Roger Schutz-Marsauche. In addition, a description of Taizé’s life and liturgical practice is provided based on my observations during the research visits to the community. The community is very popular among youths: over 100,000 of them visit Taizé annually. Even though it has its critics, the community is also highly esteemed by church leaders, many of whom have visited Taizé throughout the years. The current prior and successor of founder Brother Roger, Brother Alois, summarized the appreciation of Brother Roger by the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodoxy, and the churches assembled in the World Council of Churches during a lecture at the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, 2012: Five years after his death, Pope Benedict XVI wrote, ‘May his witness to an ecumenism of holiness inspire us in our march towards unity.’ Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople added: ‘This search for unity, in joy, humility, love and truth, both in relation to others, ‘sacrament of the brother’ as well as in the relationship with God, ‘sacrament of the altar’, sums up the essence of this approach, the path of Taizé.’ ‘Combining fidelity to the teaching of the Holy Fathers with creative adaptation to the needs of today, in a missionary ministry among youth, characterized the path of Brother Roger and that of the community founded by him,’ commented the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill. And the Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse Tveit, recalled that what Brother Roger has done ‘has inspired churches throughout the world.’241 Roger Schutz-Marsauche and his community: Some characteristics 242 Roger Louis Schutz-Marsauche, the founder of the Taizé community, was born in 1915 in the little village of Provence, Switzerland. The son of a Reformed 241 Brother Alois, “A Passion for the Unity of Christ’s Body,” Lecture at the 50th International Eucharistic Congress, 2012, https://saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=37049. 242 Since this is not a historical but an ethnographic study focusing on Taizé’s current practice, I only very briefly sketch the history of the Taizé community for the reader to understand its origins and development in light of the interests of this research. For comprehensive accounts of the community’s history, I refer to Silvia Scatena, Taizé, una parabola di unità. Storia della comunità dalle origini al concilio dei giovani (Bologna: Il Molino, 2018); Nancy Sanders Gower, “Reformed and Ecumenical: The Foundations of the
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