He was a leading journalist. A great figure of religious information. In this sector, he has long set the tone, often to the dismay of institutions, by the quality of his investigations and by the prestige of the title, Le Monde , which employed him from 1985 to 2008. Henri Tincq died on Sunday March 29 2020, at 74, after the coronavirus. This time sickness has ended up weakening a man who has struggled with great dignity and courage for decades against kidney disease. In retirement, he wrote analyzes on religious questions for the Slate site. He had also published two recent Vatican books , the end of a world (Cerf) and La grande fear des catholiques de France (Grasset).
This could be considered his testament book. There he openly claimed - and as rarely - his left and progressive Christianity, a line that guided all the life and action of this native of the north, on November 2, 1945. This close friend of the Jesuits had already developed his nostalgia for 'a leftist Catholicism - which he considered too extinct - in his book Catholicism, the return of fundamentalism (CNRS editions - 2009).
But we should cite other works from an impressive bibliography - for a daily journalist -, a tireless worker, elegant and fine pen, often relevant, sometimes acerbic. Including his excellent biography of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, The Cardinal Prophet (Grasset and Fasquelle) with which he was close and for which he had been able to access unpublished sources. Or L'Étoile et la Croix , one of his first works on the question of the relations between Judaism and Christianity.
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This observer was also the assiduous and demanding witness of a pivotal time of the Catholic Church, first carried by the promises of Vatican Council II but which had to count with a certain decline in France and in the West. He has told thousands of articles this spring and this ecclesial autumn. Including the pontificate of John Paul II where he often fought for influence, and sometimes battled, against the sharp feathers of Figaro , André Frossard, Jean Bourdarias, Joseph Vandrisse and Jean Sévilla.
Henri Tincq thus often played a role of weight in the multiple adventures, often passionate, which constitute religious information. And consequently in the formation of opinion, outside the circles of insiders, on these sensitive subjects. He will also have experienced the transition from religious information, rather denominational and almost monopolized by Catholicism in the 1970s, to a pluralist, transversal, multireligious treatment of this sector of the press.
This respectable and respected journalist leaves. He started his career as a journalist in 1972 at La Croix, in the economic and social service. He graduated from the school of journalism in Lille after graduating from the Institut d'études politiques in Paris where he entered after a BA in literature. In 1977, he became head of the political service of the Catholic daily and then deputy editor in 1981, alongside Noël Copin. In 1983, he became head of the religion service at La Croix . In 1985 he entered the World where he will then acquire, through his talent and hard work, his fame.
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This professional, man of conviction, passionate, admired or controversial Catholic, sometimes hated for his positions, wrote with his meticulous precision and his sense of synthesis, his last great journalistic fresco in the weekly L'Express in December 2018 on… Cardinal Barbarin! He was close to him, having known him as a young parish priest in his parish of Île-de-France and in his dramatic personal circumstances. This article will remain as one of the best - and most serious - portraits ever written on the Archbishop of Lyon who was nevertheless under heavy fire from the most severe critics. Henri Tincq, a man of loyalty, did not give in to the raging sheep forces. He dared to take a lucid and balanced form of defense from the overwhelmed prelate. Like so many times, this journalist tried, with his art, to write as accurately as possible.