[3] At the age of eighteen he was enlisted in the Wehrmacht and escaped being sent to the Russian front thanks to a false diagnosis of tuberculosis during the military medical examination.
[3] At the request of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Algiers, Schumacher was sent in 1964 to the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria[4] alongside three other monks from Timadeuc.
On 18 September 1997, he became the successor of Christian de Chergé by election of this community, now called the Priory of Our Lady of Atlas.
Four years later, in 2000, they settled permanently in Midelt in a monastery previously occupied by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters.
Jean-Pierre and the rest of the community of Our Lady went to Algeria for the beatification of his murdered companions and several other killed Christians of the Algerian civil war and he returned to the Tibhirine monastery for a final time.