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What an fascinating movie the life of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger could make. The Cardinal, who died on Sunday at the age of 80, was mourned at his funeral in Paris with both Jewish and Catholic prayers.

There’s your closing scene right there.

In Octogenarian’s account:

Lustiger, who was the archbishop of Paris until his retirement two years ago, was born to Polish Jewish immigrant parents in Paris. In 1940, after the German occupation of France, he was hidden with a Catholic family where he was exposed to and converted to Catholicism at age 13.

Two years later, his mother, who had objected to his conversion, was deported to a Nazi German concentration camp, where she died the following year. His father, who had also objected to Lustiger’s religious conversion, survived the Holocaust. When Lustiger was ordained a priest in 1954, his father sadly observed the ceremony from a seat far back in the church.

Just amazing.

In 1995, during to one of his visits to Israel, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi charged that Lustiger had “betrayed his people and his faith during the most difficult and darkest of periods” in the 1940s. The rabbi dismissed Lustiger’s claim that he had remained a Jew.

Lustiger responded: “To say that I am no longer a Jew is like denying my father and mother, my grandfathers and grandmothers. I am as Jewish as all the other members of my family who were butchered in Auschwitz or in the other camps.”

Read Octogenarian’s whole thing

Mr. Spielberg, are you listening?

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur to help end four years of rape and slaughter. This is good news and although China and Sudan insisted that the text of the resolution be watered down to remove the threat of sanctions and the authorization for the new force to seize arms, at least some of the resolution, the part dealing with threats to peace and security, is under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which can be militarily enforced.

However, although the council urged speedy deployment, the bulk of the force is not expected to be on the ground until next year and, even then, ultimate troop strength depends on the willingness of U.N. member states to contribute troops and military hardware. There are also problems with interpretation of the resolution as Western nations maintain that the main purpose of the force is to protect innocent civilians while Sudan insists the operation must not usurp Khartoum’s ultimate responsibility. Meanwhile, the daily violence and attacks on humanitarian staff are destroying attempts to get aid to the beleaguered civilians, with some 500,000 Darfuris out of reach of the world’s aid operation in Sudan’s remote west, according to a U.N. official. In addition, Arabs from Chad and Niger are crossing into Darfur in “unprecedented” numbers, prompting claims that the Sudanese government is trying systematically to repopulate the war- ravaged region. Even the UN Human Rights Committee, which called on Sudan to prosecute war crimes committed in Darfur, admits that militias are engaging in “ethnic cleansing”.

Between now and the arrival of the new peacekeeping force next year, things are likely to get worse rather than better and the violence and ethnic cleansing is likely to intensify. There is evidence that we can campaign to make a difference and the time to do this is now.

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