Memorial Service on the 80th Anniversary of the Death of Père Jacques de Jésus in Linz

June 2nd, 2025

On June 2, 2025, the Bishop of Linz, Dr. Manfred Scheuer, celebrated a solemn memorial service for the French Carmelite Père Jacques de Jésus (Lucien Bunel) in the Carmelite Church in Linz.

Père Jacques de Jésus was deported to KL Gusen I Concentration Camp in May 1944 for hiding three Jewish boys from Nazi persecution at his school in Avon, France.

In the Gusen I Concentration Camp, he followed in the footsteps of Dr. Johann Gruber (The Saint of Gusen) and sacrificed himself unconditionally for his fellow prisoners as a priest and member of the order.

Although he was liberated from the Mauthausen-Gusen complex on May 5, 1945, already ill and weakened, he died on June 2, 1945, in the Elisabethinen Hospital in Linz due to his health, which had deteriorated in more than eleven months of suffering in the hell of Gusen, and never saw his homeland again.

The Carmelite Order initiated a beatification process for him in 1997, and the French director Louis Malle created a moving memorial to Père Jacques in 1987 with the movie „Au revoir, les enfants“ [Goodbye, Children].

The following members of the Gusen Memorial Committee (GMC) actively supported the organization and implementation of this memorial service with their contributions: President Reinhard Kaspar, Julia Mayr, and Prof. Rudolf A. Haunschmied.

Josef Waller from the Linzer Kirchenzeitung wrote this touching report on the memorial service.

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