Aron Jean-Marie Lustiger (; 17 September 1926 – 5 August 2007) was a French cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Paris from 1981 until his resignation in 2005. He was made a cardinal in 1983 by Pope John Paul II. His life is depicted in the 2013 film Le métis de Dieu (The Jewish Cardinal).
Life and work
Early years
Lustiger was born Aron Lustiger in Paris to a Jewish family. His parents, Charles and Gisèle Lustiger, were Ashkenazi Jews from Będzin, Poland, who had left Poland around World War I. Lustiger's father ran a hosiery shop. Aron Lustiger studied at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, where he first encountered anti-Semitism. Visiting Germany in 1937, he was hosted by an anti-Nazi Protestant family whose children had been required to join the Hitler Youth.
Sometime between the ages of ten and twelve, Lustiger came across a Protestant Bible and felt inexplicably attracted to it. On the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the family moved to Orléans.
In March 1940, during Holy Week, the 13-year-old Lustiger decided to convert to Roman Catholicism. On 21 August he was baptized as Aron Jean-Marie by the Bishop of Orléans, Jules-Marie-Victor Courcoux. His sister converted later. In October 1940, the Vichy regime passed the first of many anti-Semitic laws, which forced increasingly strict conditions on Jews in the unoccupied zone.
Lustiger, his father, and sister sought refuge in unoccupied southern France, while his mother returned to Paris to run the family business. In September 1942, his mother was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp where she was murdered the following year. The surviving family returned to Paris at the end of the war. Lustiger's father tried unsuccessfully to have his son's baptism annulled, and even sought the help of the chief rabbi of Paris.
Early career
Lustiger graduated from the Sorbonne with a literature degree in 1946. He entered the seminary of the Carmelite fathers in Paris, and later the Institut Catholique de Paris. He first visited Israel in 1951. On 17 April 1954 he was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Émile-Arsène Blanchet, rector of the Institut Catholique. From 1954 to 1959 he was a chaplain at the Sorbonne.
For the next ten years, he was the director of Richelieu Centre, which trains university chaplains and counsels lay teachers and students of the grandes écoles, graduate schools such as the ÉNS-Fontenay-Saint-Cloud or the Ecole des Chartes.
From 1969 to 1979, Lustiger was vicar of the Parish of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal, in the wealthy 16th arrondissement of Paris. His parochial assistant was André Vingt-Trois, who years later would succeed him as Archbishop of Paris.
On 10 November 1979, Lustiger was appointed Bishop of Orléans by Pope John Paul II after a 15-month vacancy. John Paul had been advised by Cardinal Paolo Bertoli, who was displeased with a new illustrated Catechism for French urban youth (Pierres vivantes) and was on bad terms with most of the French clergy.
Lustiger received his episcopal consecration on 8 December 1979 from Cardinal François Marty, with Archbishop Eugène Ernoult of Sens and Bishop Daniel Pézeril serving as co-consecrators. When installed as bishop, Lustiger avoided all reference to his liberal predecessor Guy-Marie Riobé, a pacifist closely allied to Catholic Action.
Archbishop of Paris (1981–2005)
On 31 January 1981 Lustiger was named Archbishop of Paris, succeeding Cardinal Marty. According to Georges Suffert, he was supported by a letter to John Paul II from André Frossard. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Traditionalist Catholic group Society of Saint Pius X, criticized his nomination. He said that the position was being given to "someone who is not truly of French origin". Liberal French clergy considered Lustiger's nomination a defeat for them.
Lustiger was considered a first-rate communicator and he was a personal friend of Jean Gélamur, head of the Catholic media group Bayard Presse. The new archbishop was particularly attentive to the media; he developed Catholic radio and television channels (Radio Notre-Dame) after François Mitterrand's liberalization of French media in 1981. He founded KTO TV in 1999, which struggled financially. Lustiger also founded a new seminary for training priests, bypassing the existing arrangements.