Jean was a great friend since 1963 when he started teaching Church History at the African Missions seminary in Lyon. He was then teaching history at the Minor Seminary of Lyon Diocese, which was situated next to the cathedral. He lent many books from his library, particularly the biographies of “dissidents” such as Wicliff or John Huss, and Luther and Calvin. I remember passing an oral exam just on my readings. He was very appreciated by all and all the seminarians were unanimous on the high quality of his courses and his sense of pedagogy.
Thanks to Jean and Joseph Hardy SMA, I developed a great interest in Church Fathers and their writing; this thereafter made us to often meet on “rue Sala” or with Lyon friends of “Sources Chrétiennes”, a place our brother Michel Dujarier eventually chose for his research.
Jean Comby and I ended up meeting around Jacques Gadille, another great university figure of Lyon, when, as director of the African Museum of Lyon 2002-2009, I participated as a member of the editorial board of Missi as we tried, in vain, to save that wonderful review of Lyon’s Society of Jesus from drowning.
It is also at CREDIC, founded by Jacques Gadille that Jean and I worked together on several occasions, to research on Church History. CREDIC was an ideal place of work and reflection also for one of our confrere Pierre Trichet of blessed memory.
Jean accompanied me fraternally with friendship and his competence for many years in my ecclesial and missionary life. He helped me to question myself “differently”, allowing me to decipher the biblical dimension “of the sense of the meaning of the future” through the ethnographic accounts that I brought back to him of my discoveries of African cultures.
Finally, our friendship was such and his interest in SMA was so real that I proposed to him to join us (SMAs) as an Honorary Member: “if one could only have measured the expression of his joy!”
Jean was a great man of the Church and a humble servant of God. May he rest in the Peace of the Lord and continue to vibrate and shine in our hearts the vitality of the universal Church with its beautiful diversity.
Michel Bonemaison SMA
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