Patrick Desbois

Patrick Desbois (born 1955, in Chalon-sur-Saône) is a French Roman Catholic priest, head of the Commission for Relations with Judaism of the French Bishops' Conference and consultant to the Vatican. He is the founder of the Yahad-In Unum, an organization dedicated to locating the sites of mass graves of Jewish victims of the Nazi mobile-killing units in the former Soviet Union. He received the Légion d'honneur, France's highest honor, for his work documenting the Holocaust.

Desbois attended the Université de Dijon, graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1977. He entered the Grand Seminary of Prado in 1981 and was ordained as a priest in 1986. That same year he earned a master's degree in theology from the Catholic University of Lyon.

In 1978, Father Desbois worked as a math teacher for the French government in Africa. He later worked for Mother Teresa in Calcutta, where he helped set up homes for the dying. After being ordained in 1986 at the age of 31, he became the Superior of the Grand Seminary in Prado, Lyon, in 1992. From 1992-99, he served as Secretary of Jewish Relations for Cardinals Decourtray, Jean Balland and Cardinal Louis-Marie Billé. In 1999, he requested to work with the Jewish community of France, and was appointed secretary to the French conference of Bishops for Relations with the Jewish community and an advisor to the Vatican on relations with Judaism.

In 2004, he joined leaders in the French Catholic and Jewish community in founding Yahad-In Unum ("together" in Latin and in Hebrew.) The organization's purpose is to further relations between Catholics and Jews. Its largest and most ambitious initiative is to locate the sites of mass graves of Jewish victims of the Nazi mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen, in the former Soviet republics and Eastern bloc.

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