François Maunoir 27.1.23-24.3.99
François Maunoir belonged to the generation of young Swiss people of that time who, fascinated as early as 1946 by the spiritual adventure of Caux, felt God's call to serve Him and to give themselves with all their heart to lay the foundations of a new world.
Last winter, during the Christmas session at Mountain House, François, Jean-Jacques Odier and I recounted some episodes from those early years. It wasn't easy, after challenging stays at Caux, to try to live at the university according to the criteria proposed to us up there and to keep a sense of God's direction. François told us with great conviction how, finding himself in a "hole", he went back up to Caux and then, after some vigorous discussions with friends, he got down on his knees and gave his life to God without conditions. This commitment was the cornerstone of his life and he held on to it until his last breat.
It was in 1953 that he was invited to Brazil. From then on, Latin America was in his heart forever. In the meantime, he had married Nicole Koechlin in Paris in 1958, who did not realize that she was marrying not only a man, but a continent. Besides Brazil, they spent three decades in Argentina and Uruguay, and later in Chile and Central America. It was not easy to sow the seeds of moral rearmament in an era marked by military dictatorships and civil wars. Fortunately, God knows how to play with the powerful of the moment, under all skies. Francis had vibrant memories of the weeks he spent in Bolivia with the Japanese students troupe and their show "The Tiger": they were held hostage by miners who were already protesting against the effects of globalization.
In the 1980s, François and Nicole returned to Geneva where, for health reasons, they were based from then on. But François's commitment to Latin America did not waver. It was from there that he edited, year after year, a Spanish version of the October issue of "Changer" that reported on what was happening during the summer in Caux, adding one or two special pages on Latin America. This publication did wonders for the 2000 or so people who received it. Francis was also one of those who worked with Bill Jaeger and his "ILO team" in the intense networking that the annual conference in June made possible. He had established strong friendships among Latin American diplomats in Geneva.
The countless letters and messages that Nicole receives from all over the continent attest to the depth of all these contacts. Among them, one of the most touching is from the former president of Costa Rica, Luis-Alberto Monge. Your wonderful husband and my close friend," he wrote, "will be greatly missed in our future struggles towards the horizons of the 21st century."
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