A Precursor of Bergoglio: Bernard Besret
He took the monastic name of Bernard. The abbey of Boquen had only been restored in 1936 by Dom Alexis Presse with the aim of returning to the original observances of the Cistercians.
In 1955, the abbot sent him to Rome to study theology at the Pontifical Faculty of Saint Anselm, where he was deeply influenced by the heresies of Dom Cipirano Vagaggini (+1999).
According to Besret, for Vagaggini Christianity was "not a question of dogma, morals or religion. It was above all a story at the heart of human history, in which God had chosen to play a role by becoming incarnate and in which he invited us to play an active part".
In 1960, after Besret had obtained his doctorate in theology, Dom Sighard Kleiner, Abbot General of the Cistercians, asked him to study the possibility of the Cîteaux Order recovering the abbey of Clairvaux. But the project was abandoned.
With the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Dom Bernard became known to the public.
He became the theological adviser to several Belgian and French bishops and was one of the main authors of Perfectae Caritatis, the Vatican II document on religious life which caused the collapse of religious life in the Church.
After nine years he had to leave Rome for health reasons and became Prior of Boquen in 1964.
Dom Bernard immediately transformed the monastery into a kind of laboratory for the "reform" [= destruction] of monastic life. In particular, he abandoned Latin and Gregorian chant and abolished the monastic enclosure.
His ideology was to give priority to individual research over community discipline and to replace the Rule of St Benedict with the "experiences" of a "community" open to the world and constantly "attentive to the unexpected and the new".
Dom Bernard then jumped on the bandwagon of May 1968 and gradually distanced himself from the Catholic faith, which he began to call "Christian mythology".
When it was too late, he was finally removed as prior in 1969. Five years later, in 1974, he left Boquen Abbey. Shortly afterwards, the entire community collapsed and the monastery was closed.
Besret broke with the Church and revealed that he was a Freemason affiliated to the Grand Orient de France. He became a civil servant.
In 1997, he developed an interest in Taoism when he made his first trip to China and converted to this religion. He went on to organise cultural trips to China and in 2010, with his friend Zhu Ping Ping, founded a centre for traditional Chinese culture on Qiyun Shan mountain in Anhui province.
He is still alive.
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