Леон Дехон: Құдайдың Қасиетті Жүрегінің дін қызметкері және антисемиттік көзқарастары

French Catholic priest

Léon Gustave Dehon, SCJ (14 March 1843 – 12 August 1925), also known as Jean of the Sacred Heart, was a French Catholic priest and the founder of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (the Dehonians). Dehon's focus in his ecclesial life was to express his closeness with workers but he especially promoted a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He established an order in 1878 dedicated to this task and to working in the foreign and diocesan missions in France and abroad. But impediments caused the order's dissolution. Dehon later reformed and reestablished it in 1884, leading the order until his death. It expanded to North and South America in the early 20th century. He had been named as Venerable on 8 March 1997. This caused the suspension of his beatification until a reexamination of his writings could be undertaken. On 5 February one French historian drew attention to seven controversial texts in which Dehon expressed anti Semitic opinions. The French paper La Croix published extracts, in which Dehon wrote:
Jews were "thirsty for gold"
Jews' "lust for money is a racial instinct in them"
The Talmud is "a manual for the bandit, the corrupter, and social destroyer"
Dehon also suggested in his writings that Jews should wear special markings, that ghettos should be re established, and Jews be excluded from land ownership and teaching positions.

The beatification process opened in the Mechelen Brussels archdiocese on 8 July 1952, granting Dehon the title of Servant of God; officials collected witness testimonies and other evidence related to Dehon's work and life before the informative process could close. The cause remained inactive until 21 October 1988. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints validated this process and received the Positio in 1990 for assessment. The theologians approved the cause on 30 January 1996 as did the C. C. S. members on 3 February 1997. Pope John Paul II titled Dehon as Venerable on 8 March 1997 after confirming that the late priest had lived a life of heroic virtue. Dehon's beatification depended upon a miracle being approved. These miracles are most often documented healings of a miraculous nature in which medicine and science fail to explain the healing. The case chosen came from Lavras. It was investigated from 1961 until some point later; another process of investigation was opened and closed in the same location in 1965. The miracle in question related to the healing of electrician Geraldo Machado da Silva from a grave case of peritonitis on 1 June 1954; he had invoked Dehon's intercession in prayer. The C. C. S. validated this process on 4 October 2002, and medical experts approved the healing as a miracle on 15 May 2003. Theologians approved it also on 21 November 2003 after confirming the miracle came after Dehon's intercession was invoked. The CCS confirmed the findings of the two boards on 20 January 2004. John Paul II confirmed the healing as a miracle on 19 April 2004, and confirmed that Dehon would be beatified. The current postulator for this cause is the Dehonite priest José Briñón Domínguez.

Dehon's beatification cause has been suspended. Initially it was postponed from a 24 April 2005 date because of the death of John Paul II three weeks prior. But the Vatican later announced that the beatification was placed on hold due to allegations of Dehon having expressed anti Semitism by both clerical and secular individuals and organizations. Before John Paul II's death in 2005, Cardinal Archbishop of Paris Jean Marie Lustiger sent an urgent letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who became Benedict XVI not long after) expressing alarm at Dehon's writings and asking for an examination. The French Episcopal Conference urged caution with the cause, and the French government warned that it would not send a representative to the beatification if it went ahead. Benedict XVI ordered an urgent reexamination of Dehon's writings, with the first meeting scheduled for that 24 June. The pope tasked Cardinal José Saraiva Martins to lead the effort, and also appointed Cardinals Paul Poupard and Roger Etchegaray.

Pope Francis on 5 June 2015 expressed his desire for Dehon's cause to proceed, referring to the founder of the Priests of the Sacred Heart as "the almost beatified Dehon". While anti Semitism had been prevalent in Dehon's lifetime, the Catholic Church had worked to reduce this bias among its clergy and congregations following the disastrous Holocaust of World War II and the effort since to build more just societies. The pope said that attitudes must be viewed in their historical context, and said that he wanted the cause to "end well". Francis added that "it's a hermeneutic problem" that warranted an evaluation of the "hermeneutic of the time", rather than evaluating Dehon's writings through contemporary viewpoints.