Brother to all

The remarkable life of Bishop Paul Schruers, who during 53 years of ministry shared the joys and sorrows of thousands

By Bennie Callebaut

Paul Schruers was the bishop of Hasselt, population 50,000, in northeast Belgium. In recent years, it was easy to bump into this elderly gentleman, a typical retiree, who was often stopped by passersby on the streets of this pleasant town.

With a smile he once told me of one of his numerous street-corner conversations. It was with a former prisoner who was out shopping with his wife. From the friendly way they were talking, his wife assumed that the man talking to her husband must have been in prison with him. Instead it was Bishop Schruers.

Bishop Paul, as people used to call him, made himself small with the smallest. He showed particular concern for prisoners, and they responded with affection. He visited the prison often, especially at times when inmates might experience great loneliness, such as at Christmas. On New Year’s Eve the bishop would be available by phone for anyone who needed a listener.

Once, while out for a walk, he had seven conversations and heard four confessions in the short distance between the retirement home
where he lived and the cathedral.

Many years earlier, in the same area of the city, Schruers had an experience as a young man that would influence him greatly. His mother had asked him to visit an elderly lady, and he obeyed, although he would have preferred to play football. Returning home, he was somewhat disappointed; his act of charity had only earned him a piece of chocolate. When he told his mother, she spoke to him about true generosity. This encouraged him to discover the riches to be found in relationships and the joy that comes from giving.

During Bishop Schruers’ lifetime in Flanders, the culture shifted from being strongly Catholic to more secular. He lived through it, modeling his life on the Gospel. He was a prolific author and a gifted speaker, and he applied his many talents, including an artistic talent inherited from his father, to working in a foreign mission that he wanted to be built on the life of God’s word.

Bishop Schruers’ spirituality had various roots. When he was young he was closely linked to the Catholic Action Movement and attracted to a Franciscan way of life. He was aware of the issues faced by workers and had connections to other priests with similar sensibilities.

Bishop Schruers’ adherence to the Focolare’s spirituality of unity was gradual and strong. In 1970, shortly after his consecration as auxiliary bishop, he took part in a summer meeting of the Focolare Movement. A few months later, listening to a young focolarino who had sold what riches he had (a record collection) and sent the proceeds to a social project in Africa, Bishop Paul wanted to do no less. That same evening he decided to give everything he had in his bank account to a church project in Belgium. He remembered that day as the first time he really felt he was a bishop.

“Sometimes we bishops discuss whether it is good for a bishop, who should be a person open to everyone, to embrace a particular spirituality,” he said. “I think everyone needs to have an anchor point, because this helps you to be open to all the other spiritualities.” Years of contact with his closest friend, Klaus Hemmerle, the bishop of Aachen in Germany, had convinced him of this.

It was Bishop Hemmerle who co-founded with Chiara Lubich the “Bishop Friends of the Focolare” group. Pope Paul VI and subsequent popes encouraged this association, seeing it as an application of an idea expressed by the Second Vatican Council — that bishops should build amongst themselves ever-stronger relationships of “effective and affective collegiality.” The contribution of Bishop Schruers’ work as a tireless animator of such bishops’ meetings in Belgium, the Netherlands and Africa was recognized by the Belgian bishops’ conference.

Among the many who attended or followed Bishop Schruers’ funeral on TV were politicians, prisoners, sick people, young people, believers and nonbelievers, Belgians and friends from abroad. Twenty bishops concelebrated. This diversity bore witness to the network of relationships the bishop had created during his life.

His great friend Cardinal Godfried Danneels described him to journalists as a wise and good man whose authority came from the strong affinity between his words and his life. For weeks afterwards, people in the diocese and beyond talked about the experiences of his life that Bishop Schruers had shared with them. For him life was the Gospel.

Bishop Schruers had a missionary soul and had planned to spend his final years in Burundi among his Hutu and Tutsi brothers and sisters in that troubled country. However, he had to give up this dream after a stroke. While convalescing, he stayed for an extended period at Mariapolis Vita, the Focolare’s little town in Belgium. He later returned there regularly, choosing to spend his remaining strength listening to all who wished to confide in him.

Thousands confided in the bishop during his 53 years of ministry, and no one was able to share these joys and sorrows better than this true brother of all.