Cardinal lustiger biography

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Archbishop emeritus of Paris (France), was born in the French capital on 17 September 1926 of parents who were Polish Jews and had emigrated to France at the beginning of the century.

During the Nazi occupation his parents were deported and his mother died in the concentration camp of Auschwitz in 1943.

Cardinal lustiger biography

The young Jean-Marie was spared because he was taken in by a family in Orléans. Through contact with them he was converted to Catholicism and was baptized on 25 August 1940 in the chapel of the bishop’s residence where twenty years later he would be the pastor.

He studied at the Montaigne Lyceum in Paris, then in Orléans, and later at the Sorbonne.

In the years of university studies, he was an active member of the Young Christian Students. After working for a year as a mechanic in Decazenville in the southwest of France, he entered the Carmelite Seminary in Paris. He earned a degree from the Catholic Institute in theology and a licentiate in letters