in memoriam province of France

Father LANUSSE left us on 5th November early in the afternoon.  Recently he kept on asking; When are we going home?  When he was told that he was already at home, he would say:  I mean our own home!

Father Jean Lanusse was born on the 31st January 1921 at Bournos (Pyrenees Atlantiques).  He was the eldest of six children and made his first vows with the Betharramites at Balarin.  He was 18 years of age.  He was sent to the Holy Land for his studies and said his first Mass in the Carmelite monastery in Bethlehem on the 30th September 1946.  The same day he was given his nomination for the Mission in Tali, China, as was his wish. 

After two months at sea we see him ready to get down to the job.  The time just to learn the language and to take his first steps in the Mission,  the Communist revolution put an end to his presence at Talaba and his dream of evangelising the country.  Under house arrest and forbidden to say Mass or to have any visitors,  he was finally expelled at the end of February 1951.  It was then that he joined up with other Betharramite Missionaries who had withdrawn to the north of Thailand.

Father Lanusse now began learning a new language and to have a more long lasting apostolate. After experiments at different posts and with promising beginnings, in 1958 he was named for Huay Bong where a group of Karians had just settled.  He stayed here for 9 years, helping the families to get settled in; he helped to develop agriculture, and he also helped with catechetics and the liberation of spirits (animism).

In 1969, Father Lanusse was put in charge of the district of Chomthong.  Besides the parish of St Michael Garicoits, he had responsibility for a leper colony in which there were lepers on the road to recovery. He simply wanted to greet them provide them with shelter and a means of livelihood, in other words  restore their dignity to these outcasts of society   At the same time he was working flat out at the education of the poor children.

In 2002 Father Lanusse retired to the Mission Centre, at Chiang Mai. In 2005 he fell and from then onwards his health deteriorated. Hospitalised on the 4th November, the doctors could see that the end was not far off. On the morning of the 5th he had a visit from the Bishop and at 14h00 he entered his Father’s House.

Mgr Joseph Surasarang presided at the funeral at Chiang Mai on 8th November.  We shall accompany our big brother with respect and devotion.

d’après Alberto Pensa, Pierre Leborgne and Eugène Lhouerrou,SCJ