Brother Roger of Taizé

1915-2005

The 90-year-old founder of the ecumenical Taizé community, Roger Louis SchutzMarsauche--known to the world simply as Brother Roger--died August 16 during evening prayer in the Church of Reconciliation, struck down by a knife wielded by a mentally disturbed woman who emerged from the crowd of 2,500 worshippers.

Taizé officials said the woman had arrived two days earlier at the community, located near Macon in Burgundy, France. A local prosecutor said the woman, reportedly 36 years old, bought the knife the day before. "It would appear for now there is little doubt that this was premeditated," he told reporters. People at the service grabbed the woman and turned her over to police.

Brother Roger's funeral took place on August 23.

The Swiss Protestant monk's sudden and tragic death prompted an outpouring of grief from Anglican leaders around the world.

"Having first visited Taizé more than forty years ago as a student, and having followed its unfolding as a community of witness to God's reconciling power and love, I am profoundly distressed by his death and the manner in which it occurred," said Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. "For such a man of peace to meet a violent end while at prayer recalls the mystery of the Cross in stark and unambiguous terms." "This is an indescribable shock.

Brother Roger was one of the best-loved Christian leaders of our time, and hundreds of thousands will be feeling his loss very personally," said Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

The Taizé community, founded in 1940 by Brother Roger when he was 25, became a safe haven for political refugees and people of all faiths, among them Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Since the late 1950s, thousands of young adults from many countries have come to Taizé to take part in weekly meetings of prayer and reflection.

More than 100 Taizé brothers, committed to material and spiritual sharing, celibacy, and simplicity of life, make visits and lead meetings in Africa, North and South America, Asia, and in Europe, as part of what they call "a pilgrimage of trust on earth."

Katrina Swanson

1935-2005

The Rev. Katrina Martha van Alstyne Welles Swanson, died on August 27 after a sixteen month bout with cancer. One of the first eleven women priests in the Episcopal Church, she was ordained by her father, the Rt. Rev. Edward R. Welles, II in the irregular ordinations in 1974 in Philadelphia.

"Katrina," as she insisted on being addressed, remembered that on January 1, 1942, Katrina's 7th birthday, she met Roosevelt and Churchill after a New Year's Day service at her father's parish in Alexandria, Virginia. The next day, when her picture shaking hands with Churchill was on the front page of newspapers around the world, she told everyone, "I met Mrs. Roosevelt!" Katrina earned her way through Radcliffe/Harvard with 40 hours of work a week. Having failed a fine arts class in her final senior term, she could not graduate with her class of 1956. So she wrote an essay and was awarded her diploma in the maid's room of the family where she was working in Oslo, Norway.

Later, George Gaines Swanson, followed her to Apeldoorn, Holland and convinced her to marry him.

The Swansons moved to California. Their two sons, Olof and William, were born in the central California desert town of Coalinga. Active in ecumenical affairs, Katrina was elected president of the Coalinga Interdenominational Women's Fellowship. After quiet years in Coalinga Katrina and George decided to put aside plans for a sabbatical at Oxford. Instead they decided to go to a third world country. So they took their preschool children for year's exchange program with the priest in Botswana in central Africa.

In Botswana, Katrina saw villages where capable Christian women had to hire men to read Morning and Evening prayer: the Anglican church did not allow women to lead worship.

Katrina, a traditional Anglo Catholic, formerly opposed to the ordination of women, gradually came to accept and champion the ordination of women as deacons, priests and bishops.

As a member of the small committee that organized the Philadelphia ordination, Katrina phoned women around the country, inviting them to be ordained with her. The day after the ordinations, her picture was on the front page of the New York Times, holding a basket with the consecrated Eucharistic bread. The altar frontal behind her read, "In Christ there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, Jew nor gentile, but all are one." Her sons, Olof and William, were acolytes.

Returning home to Kansas City, George had to fire her as his unpaid assistant, in order to remain as rector of an inner city parish under an outraged bishop. She was hired for a dollar a year as assistant priest at the Church of the Liberation in St. Louis. The family moved to Jersey City, New Jersey in 1978. George became rector of the Church of the Ascension in Jersey City. Shortly after moving there, Katrina was called to become rector of St. John's Parish in Union City. She received the telephone call offering her the position while recovering from radical mastectomy and lymphectemy in a Manhattan hospital. She followed her doctors' advice and did not reveal her surgery or the years of cancer.

The first woman Episcopal rector in the tristate New York metropolitan area, Katrina instituted bilingual, Spanish and English services and started an after school program for over a hundred children.

Katrina retired in 1996 and moved to Manset, Maine. After she was diagnosed with inoperable colonic cancer in May, 2004, Katrina wrote to a close friend of more than forty years, a friend who was not a Christian. Katrina wrote to her friend: "I think I am pretty relaxed about the prognosis. Maybe sometimes I get a bit impatient and wish the time would move along a little faster and then I think of all the things I'd like to get done before departure and yet quite a bit I say to myself "You don't need to divide those daffodils anymore, they will take care of themselves" etc.

"But what comes next? That seems to be a question for many. So I check with my Boss and this is what I come up with that works for me [in Luke, 23:39-43 and Matthew 25:31-46]"

"First of all in Luke the circumstances are so very gruesome (and I believe that Christ was killed by humanity -- all of us human beings who were/are too busy being selfish and right to live a Godly open life. But to me the glorious point of the Luke passage is the timing and the place. Today you will be in Paradise with me.

"Secondly in Matthew Jesus graphically spells out the Heaven and Hell part of the next life (but I must say, I think Jesus is such a forgiving God/Person that there may be few if any who make it to Hell.) Verse 32 starts out that all the earth's people will be gathered before the King. Evidently being a member of the club is not the ticket to this great place.

Actions like giving a double size tip rather than the minimum or not at all--sounds easy, but many a time I'm in too much of a hurry to stop and fish in my pocket for that little bit of change--or more. And yet the ticket is available to all. No one is too small or poor to be able to accomplish the price of the ticket to Heaven. In the inner city, it is usually the poorest who are the front edge of being there for their neighbors."

Katrina and George became part of the congregation at St.Saviour's Church in Bar Harbor, where they occasionally celebrated Mass. It was there that the two Swansons blessed the marriage of their son William to HélËne de Boissiere during Katrina's final illness. Wanting to honor her, some of Katrina's friends made a beautiful cedar bench for the grounds of St. Saviour's Church in Bar Harbor. At the bench's dedication in April 2005 the Rt. Rev. Chilton Knudsen, Episcopal Bishop of Maine, was asked to speak. She said to Katrina, " Thank you for being a pioneer.Without you, I wouldn't be here."

Katrina is survived by her husband George, her children, Olof and William, and HélËne, and her brother, Peter Welles. A "Katrina Fund" has been initiated to promote the inclusion of women in society. For more information contact T. Fletcher, PO Box 8, Southwest Bar Harbor ME 04679.