Crisis of Conscience

Through World War II, Pastor Etienne Mathiot of the French Reformed Church gave .refuge to hundreds of fleeing Jews, shot-down British pilots, escaped French prisoners and resistance fighters. Last year at his home in Belfort, near the Swiss border, he gave sanctuary to another hunted man. Si Ali Lahouedi, a student sought by the French police as a member of Algeria's Front de Liberation National. After hiding Si Ali in his house for weeks, Pastor Mathiot drove the fugitive to Switzerland. French police arrested the minister shortly after his return, charged him with treason. The trial stirred all France, showed clearly that many French Christians-Protestant and Catholic-are deeply troubled by their country's part in the Algerian war.

Clergymen, politicians, resistance heroes came forward to defend Pastor Mathiot. Said Charles Westphal, vice president of the French Protestant Federation and a veteran of the wartime French underground: "Mathiot's action is justified by the prevalence of torture in Algeria ... He obeyed the highest moral law there is. His act is symptomatic of the great unrest in French consciences today." Other signs of unrest: the French Reformed Church, as well as the Catholic Church, has repeatedly drawn attention to abuses in Algeria. Speaking not only against excessive use of violence there but against bitter anti-Algerian propaganda at home, the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France said: "Every Frenchman must love his country and be prepared to serve it without hating othe.' countries." Last week La Mission de France, a society of 400 priests headed by Achille Cardinal Lienart, condemned French abuses and sympathized with the Algerians' drive for independence: "The church is not opposed to a people acquiring its independence, in Algeria or anywhere else."

While the public debate continued, Preacher Mathiot stood in the dock in a small, jampacked Besangon courtroom. Also on trial: Francine Rapine, 21-year-old Catholic student who had acted as Si Ali's secretary (police proved that Si Ali had organized a local cell). To the court Mathiot explained his motives: "A hunted man is a hunted man. A wounded man is a wounded man. He was wounded mortally. He begged for the safety of a presbytery in the name of Jesus Christ . . . There is hope in an act of love. I acted as a Protestant pastor and as a Christian."

The judge handed down his verdict-guilty. For Student Rapine: three years in jail. For Pastor Mathiot: eight months. "I put my conscience above justice," said Mathiot. "I would do it again."

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