CONFUSION SURROUNDS the claim by a French former bishop that the late Br Roger Schutz, founder of the ecumenical Taizé community, secretly "converted" to Catholicism in 1972. Raymond Séguy, the one-time Catholic Bishop of Autun, whose diocese includes the village of Taizé, said last week that Br Roger - ostensibly a Swiss Protestant monk - made a "Catholic profession of faith" in 1972 to his episcopal predecessor prior to receiving Communion.

Bishop Séguy added: "Br Roger himself told me he was a Catholic. When he came to Rome, he often attended Mass in the Pope's private chapel and received Communion." He used to attend Mass in the private chapel and Cardinal Walter Kasper presided over his requiem Mass last summer, following his murder by a disturbed woman. Br Roger's Catholicism was never made public because he did not want to "break the ecumenical communion around Taizé", said Bishop Séguy.

The Pontifical Council for Christian Unity has affirmed the "objective and public" character of Br Roger's "communion of faith", but the Taizé community said that to suggest that Br Roger had undergone a formal conversion "misrepresents his true intentions".

They pointed out in a statement that Bishop Séguy had rowed back from saying that Br Roger had converted, and had qualified his remarks when he told Agence France Presse: "I did not say that Br Roger abjured Protestantism, but he showed that he subscribed fully to the Catholic faith."

The community added that, from a Protestant background, "Br Roger undertook a step that was without precedent since the Reformation: entering progressively into a full communion with the faith of the Catholic Church without a ‘conversion' that would imply a break with his origins." The community added: "Br Roger was a man of communion, and that is perhaps the most difficult thing for some people to understand."

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