André Mandouze

Who was André Mandouze?

André Mandouze, was a French academic and journalist, a Catholic, and an anti-fascist and anti-colonialist activist.

In January 1946, when he was offered a post at the University of Algiers, he accepted with alacrity—for him, Algeria was the birthplace of Saint Augustine, to whom he had dedicated his thesis at the Sorbonne.

A confidant of Léon-Etienne Duval, he agitated for the independence of Algeria. With other Catholic intellectuals, such as François Mauriac, Louis Massignon, Henri Guillemin, Henri-Irénée Marrou, Pierre-Henri Simon, he criticised the French Army for using of torture in Algeria, in the pages of Le Monde and France-Observateur,

In 1963, at the request of Ahmed Ben Bella, he became rector of the University of Algiers. But with the arrival in power of Houari Boumédiène, he resumed being a professor in the university and then returned to Paris to teach Latin at the Sorbonne.

He did not return to Algeria until 2001, to preside with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika over a colloquium on Saint Augustine who, for him, symbolised the link between Africaness and universalism.