Carried away in a few days by cancer, Jean-Luc Pouthier apparently did not plan, at nearly 70, to retire, especially since he was not the man of a single activity. or a single competence but that he has exercised several, successively or at the same time. Originally from Bison, the son of a doctor, he nevertheless chose the Sciences Po course, from which he graduated in 1976, before joining the National Institute of Oriental Languages ??and Civilizations (Inalco), for Arabic, and the Center Training for Journalists (CFJ).

Admitted to the French School in Rome, he prepared there for three years, under the direction of Jean-Marie Mayeur, his doctoral thesis, defended in 1981 and entitled “The Social Catholics and the French Christian Democrats before Fascist Italy . 1922-1935”. He will retain a lasting interest in Christian democracy and an excellent knowledge of its successes as well as its setbacks on both sides of the Alps. But of this stay in Rome, spent in the company of his wife, Sophie Gherardi, a former journalist at Le Monde, he will above all keep a dazzled memory of the “City”, of its past and present grandeur as well as of the “good and good life” that she offered plenty.

He then worked for some time at AFP as a journalist, while becoming an editor at Seuil in the humanities sector. There, he co-hosts, with Jean-Luc Giribone and Olivier Mongin, the “La Couleur des Idées” collection, still in its infancy. For this collection, he will translate two books by Norberto Bobbio, an essential thinker of democracy (Droite et gauche: essay on a political distinction, 1996; The Future of Democracy, with Sophie Gherardi, 2007).

Talent and interpersonal skills

Translating Bobbio did not correspond to a pure external opportunity: it reflected his political philosophy of a democracy that was both rational and moderate. At Liberation, which he joined in the late 1980s to run the Ideas section, he appreciated the “discussing” atmosphere, probably more than the excessive “ideas” still well represented in the team of journalists. He once confessed that he liked to go to the newspaper on Sunday afternoons, which saved him from the gloom or “depression” of the end of the weekend.

The turning point of the year 2000 was also a turning point in his career as a journalist: he was appointed editor-in-chief then managing editor of Le Monde de la Bible, a high-level, heavily illustrated monthly magazine on history, archaeology, documentation, the arts in the biblical universe and in all the religions of the ancient East.

Although apparently distant from his interests for modern religion and its relationship with politics, this function allows him to reconnect with a concern that has never left him and that he assumes: that of religion – let’s even say: of faith – in history and its contemporary reception.

In his position, he could in any case measure, or he had to admit, the extent of the questions brought by archeology to the biblical historiography of the first millennium before our era: the gap between the biblical narrative and the archaeological reality sometimes turned out to be abysmal… But he was able to calmly and clearly explain these research results, which a priori went against his convictions.

It is not surprising that in 2008 he accepted the proposal to return to Rome to take up the post of cultural adviser at the French embassy to the Holy See and director of the cultural center Saint-Louis de France. He fulfills these functions, which involve administration and sometimes complicated negotiations with various Roman, secular and ecclesiastical authorities, with the talent and interpersonal skills that characterized him, but was he as fulfilled in the Eternal City as twenty years earlier? ?

It seems that he was happy to return to Paris, for responsibilities and teaching at Sciences Po, at the Catholic Institute of Paris, at the Center Sèvres (Jesuit faculties in Paris) and at the review Etudes, for which he moderated, with François Euvé, “Public Ethics Tuesdays”.

Alongside all these activities, he had founded with Sophie Gherardi, to provide religious training, particularly in business, the Center for the Study of Contemporary Religious Facts (Cefrelco), a symbol of his competence and his interest in matters of religion… and secularism.

A great connoisseur of the avatars of Catholicism in the 20th century, but modest, cordial and conciliatory, a lover of conversation around a little white wine, Jean-Luc Pouthier was well aware of the violence and the politico-religious and societal conflicts of the ‘hour. He even knew how to lay them out with great clarity, but personally he hated them and didn’t get involved. No one can blame him.