Gaston Marie Jacquier

Gaston Marie Jacquier (23 February 1904 – 8 July 1976) was a French prelate of the Catholic Church in Algeria. Originally from Évian-les-Bains, France, he moved to French Algeria and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Algiers. In 1960, he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Algiers. He participated in all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. In 1976, he was assassinated with a knife on a street in Algiers.

Biography Jacquier was born on 23 February 1904 in Évian-les-Bains, Haute-Savoie, France. He was the son of François Jacquier, a merchant, and Thérèse Chevallay. He was educated at Collège Saint-Marie in La Roche-sur-Foron. Three decades later, in 1956, he was made vicar general of the archdiocese, assisting recently appointed Archbishop Léon-Étienne Duval.

On 4 December 1960, Jacquier was appointed Titular Bishop of Sufasar and Auxiliary Bishop of Algiers by Pope John XXIII. The co-consecrators were Emile-Joseph Socquet, M.Afr., the Archbishop Emeritus of Ouagadougou, and Paul Pierre Pinier, the Bishop of Constantine.

As auxiliary bishop, Jacquier was well known in the city of Algiers, where he engaged in humanitarian work. From 1962 to 1965, Jacquier participated in all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. The attack took place shortly after noon, while the bishop was walking down the crowded Rue Khelifa Boukhalfa in central Algiers, near the archdiocesan offices and St Charles Church (now El Rahma Mosque). Two days after the attack, police arrested 26-year-old Abdessalam Abdelkader.

Although Abdelkader had a history of psychiatric problems, some felt that the attack was religiously motivated. Jacquier was wearing full clerical attire at the time of the attack, including the pectoral cross worn by Catholic bishops. Some also noted that the inner thigh, where an artery is located is an unusual place for a mentally ill person to stab randomly. In addition, the attacker fled quickly into a car that was waiting very close nearby. Following Jacquier's murder, Duval ordered the priests in the Archdiocese of Algiers not to wear the religious habit in public or to display the cross conspicuously. In the years that followed, the archdiocese's churches stopped ringing their bells to avoid inciting Islamic extremist violence.

Legacy

Episcopal lineage

Cardinal Scipione Rebiba Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santorio (1566) Cardinal Girolamo Bernerio, OP (1586) Archbishop Galeazzo Sanvitale (1604) Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi (1621) Cardinal Luigi Caetani (1622) Cardinal Ulderico Carpegna (1630) Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri degli Albertoni (1666) Pope Benedict XIII (1675) Pope Benedict XIV (1724) Pope Clement XIII (1743) Cardinal Gian Francesco Albani (1760) Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico (1773) Archbishop Antonio Dugnani (1785) Archbishop Jean-Charles de Coucy (1790) Archbishop Gustave Maximilien Juste de Croÿ-Solre (1820) Bishop Charles Auguste Marie Joseph, Count of Forbin-Janson (1824) Cardinal Ferdinand-François-Auguste Donnet (1835) Archbishop Jean-Emile Fonteneau (1875) Bishop Charles-Évariste-Joseph Coeuret-Varin (1885) Bishop Joseph Rumeau (1899) Bishop Jean-Camille Costes (1924) Bishop Auguste-Léon-Alexis Cesbron (1940) Archbishop Léon-Étienne Duval (1947) Bishop Gaston Marie Jacquier (1961)