Retreat at the School of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Missionary Priest of the Sacred Heart of Issoudun, Father Alfred Bour was born in 1943 in France. He holds a licentiate-master's degree in theology from the Faculty of Theology in Strasbourg.
Converted to evangelical non-violence by Jean Goss in 1970, he trained at the M.I.R. (International Movement for Reconciliation) which has been honoured with six Nobel Peace Prizes, including Martin-Luther King. For a time he was President of the Movement in France.
At the request of the Bishops of Butare, Mgr Gahamanyi and Mgr Rukamba, he worked for twelve years, part of the year, in the service of reconciliation in the land of the Thousand Hills, Rwanda, which experienced a terrible genocide in April 1994. While giving a course in theology at the African Catechetical Institute in Butare, he helped to train resource persons for non-violent conflict resolution.
At the request of those who were convinced by the message of evangelical non-violence, he agreed to write these pages in the form of a "holy reading of the Word of God" in nine tableaux of St. John, in order to root their non-violent commitment in a strongly paschal mysticism, that of the spirituality of the Pierced Heart of Jesus, which reveals to us a radically non-violent God. These pages will nourish all those who call for a culture of Peace through evangelical non-violence.