Fr Géry Lemaire - eternal memory, requiescat in pace

A fews ago, there appeared the brief announcement on the diocesan website « 

19 сентября 2013 года на 86-м году жизни, после непродолжительной болезни отошел ко Господу старейший клирик (на пoкoe) Брюссельско-Бельгийскoй Архиепископии Русской Православной Церкви, митрофорный протоиерей Жери Лемэр. »

(On 19 September 2013, in his 86th year, after a short illness, the oldest cleric of the archdiocese of Brussels and Belgium of the Russian Orthodox Church, (retired) mitred proto-priest Géry Lemaire, departed to the Lord).

Basta. I hope someone writes some more, but I sort of doubt it. No public reaction so far from the archbishop, who is on leave in Russia.

Fr Géry (the name he took after the ounding saint of Brussels) had in a sense outlived his time. Not just because he had been out of action for some 4 years with Alzheimer’s, which must have been coming on already when he was made a mitred priest. But because he was a French-speaking priest in a diocese which, after encouraging French-speaking parishes in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Russian-speaking parishes were collapsing, neglected them with the mass arrival of Poles and then Russian-speakers, and essentially left them to wither on the vine.  The building where he served was sold in 2003, and his community was closed in 2008.

I did not know him well. I was never a parishioner and I never made my confession to him. He had been a priest since the late 1960s I think (I can't find an exact date). He prepared his sermons and preached tolerably well. He celebrated accurately, from his own hand-written copy of the liturgy. Most of his vestments pre-dated the revival of ecclesiastical tailoring and were made by pious hands with what fabric they could afford. Every year he organized a well-attended week-end retreat at a local Catholic monastery. Whenever I spoke to him, he was gentle, courteous and attentive. I gather he was something of a musician, a conductor with several CDs to his name. One of our Russian priests described him kindly as a ‘Baroque’ character, yes, a bit out of place in a re-Russianized diocese, but respected by nearly all as a decent, honest person who loved God and tried to serve Him as best he could.

Eternal memory. Requiescat in pace