Father Stan Rougier is celebrating his 90th birthday.

Father Stan Rougier is celebrating his 90th birthday. As he recalls with humor, his first "appearance" was near Lourdes, in the family home of Jurançon on June 23, 1930, the fifth of six siblings. At the end of the year, he will celebrate his 60 years of priesthood. Well recovered from Covid-19, we had the chance of a long meeting with this long-time friend of Fondacio on June 9th.

"The passion of meeting"

His “passion for encounters” remains intact. The book of the same name underlines one of Stan's creeds: "In the evening of our lives, we will only be rich from the bonds that we will have woven day after day", a practice that he continues to live daily and to transmit. with enthusiasm. The very vivid memories of the many encounters, of the many faces, which have enriched Stan's life, particularly in camps with young people, testify to the determining importance of an authentic presence in order to build oneself solidly. “The empty heart does a hundred times more damage than the Covid. We create each other through encounter. In the eyes of God, each human being is worth more than the entire universe. »»

Passing on the considerable treasure of what life has taught us is at the heart of Stan's vocation today, with three more book projects to continue sharing his hope. . “Receiving life as a gift is the first remedy for fatigue and boredom. Joy, present in many stories of the Bible, is an excellent barometer, an inner compass to guide us, a sign that we are on the "right path". It is the call to a life that I call “life size” where each man, each woman is on a mission for the world by deploying his talents there to give his full measure. »

The writer Christiane Singer, whose writing Stan appreciates so much, said in this sense: “We are permanently necessary to the daily creation of the world. We are never the guardians of an accomplished but always the co-creators of a future. »

“Young people, the future depends on you”

God does not act for us. Free, we are called to act."Because God is Love, he wanted to mobilize us. The cause of our misfortunes is not in an indifference coming from God, but in a passivity coming from men"says Stan Rougier. Thus the safeguard of our planet, the fight for social justice, the construction of a more humane and fairer world will not happen by dint of praying to a magician God who would do the work for us. "It is through an active, concrete and irreplaceable resistance that we will incarnate what the Gospel proposes to us as another world: this world, but this world differently. […] The unheard-of of the Gospel reveals a world where it would be possible to believe, to hope and to love" indicates Father Dominique Collin op

“Which God are young people atheists of? »

These words often come up in the writings of Stan Rougier. They speak of his attachment to renewing the language of the search for God in order to make the message of the Gospel audible to our contemporaries, and especially young people. Moreover in his own experience of personal and interior construction, Stan speaks of the source of inspiration that Antoine de Saint Exupéry represented in his adolescence. He continues to verify the relevance of the writings of the author of The Little Prince to respond to young people's thirst for meaning, as an invitation to the enchantment of the soul. The book "What can we say to men?" restores the intensity of Saint Exupéry's inner quest in words "that speak."It is the same challenge of announcing the Good News to our contemporaries, far from ready-made liturgical formulas or from the jargon of Christians who no longer manage to say something significant to people, of the very essence of their life. Stan Rougier's contribution to supporting and valuing all those who get in tune with young people and people to transmit Good News "that speaks" is fundamental. There is no age to bail out Hope.

Thank you Stan for being a traveling companion for Fondacio and for being an indefatigable awakener of this God who placed his Power in our hands and who, out of respect for our freedom, never ceases to appeal to our consciences and our generosity.