Abstract

The story of Christian de Chergé and his brethren from the Cistercian monastery of Notre-Dame de l’Atlas is the concretisation of the revolutionary transition from the logic of a Catholic church conquering new territories, which for about a millennium had no longer been Christian, by means of a mission seen as an expansive strategy (implantatio ecclesiae), to a new postcolonial logic, inspired by the conciliar wind. The Trappists of Tibhirine, along with the other martyrs in Algeria, who were canonised in December 2018, are the main actors in that “church of the relationshipsµ sought in particular by Cardinal Léon-Étienne Duval, Archbishop of Algiers (1954- 1988), such a relationship being first and foremost with the country’s Muslim majority. The contribution highlights some salient passages in this history that lasted almost two centuries, characterised by a continual oscillation from repulsion to an attempt at assimilation and a genuine welcome in respect of its fertile otherness.