Pierre-Lucien Claverie OP (8 May 1938 – 1 August 1996) was a French Catholic prelate who was a professed member from the Order of Preachers and served as the Bishop of Oran from 1981 until his murder in 1996 by Islamic extremists.
[1] He was committed to ecumenism and dialogue with the Islamic faith and dreamed of a peaceful co-existence with Muslims in an independent Algeria.
[4] Claverie's cause for canonization opened on 31 March 2007 as part of a larger group cause of other religious killed during the course of the Algerian Civil War.
[1] Claverie went back to France and continued his theological studies at Le Saulchoir, being ordained priest in 1965.
From January 1973 to 1981 he ran the Centre des Glycines in Algiers, an institute for the studies of classical Arabic and Islam; the original idea was for the institute to be a place of study for those religious planning to serve in Algeria, but Algerian independence led many Muslims to come the center, eager to study Islamic culture and intent on learning Classical Arabic since the language of colonization had been French and the language of everyday life had been dialectal Arabic.
[3] Pierre Claverie was a man of dialogue and he participated in numerous meetings between Christians and Muslims but was at times critical of formal inter-religious conferences which he felt remained too basic and surface-level.
[2][3] He had such an excellent knowledge of Islam that the people of Oran called him "the Bishop of the Muslims" which was a title that must have pleased him since he had dreamed of establishing true dialogue among all believers irrespective of faith or creed.
From 1992 onward - after the Algerian Civil War broke out - the small Catholic Church which served foreign workers (for the most part) was threatened.
Once he deemed it to be necessary, he did not hesitate to publicly criticize the two main opposing forces - the Islamic Salvation Front and the Algerian Government.
The cause for canonization for Claverie - as well as eighteen other religious killed during the war - commenced in Algiers after the diocesan forum was transferred from Oran on 5 July 2006.
[8] On 1 September 2017 the Archbishop of Algiers Paul Jacques Marie Desfarges and the Bishop of Oran Jean-Paul Vesco met with Pope Francis in a private audience to discuss the cause since theologians had approved the cause at that stage.