Next weekend will mark twenty years since seven French Trappist monks were kidnapped from Atlas Abbey in the Algerian mountains and found dead several weeks later.

Only two of their confreres survived by miraculously eluding the kidnappers and later fleeing to Morocco to set up a new monastery.

The story of the monks of Tibhirine became world famous through the film, Des hommes et des Dieux (Of Gods and Men) but it is still unclear who was behind their disappearance and murder - extremist groups or the Algerian army? French investigators are still working actively, though discretely, on the case.

Meanwhile, tries to keep the memory of these monks alive, as best he can.

"I've lived there now for fifteen years," says the 65-year-old priest.

Before being invited to Algeria in 2001 by the local bishop, he spent the previous twelve years in Egypt.

"But Algeria is trickier," he says. "Moreover, it is a former French colony, which continues to complicate things for me, since I'm a French citizen," the priest adds.

Fr Lassausse, who grew up in a peasant family in the French Vosges, has a degree in agronomy. He is also part of France's worker-priests movement, ordained men who work other secular jobs in addition to carrying out their Church ministry. Most of these priests have been part of the Territorial Prelature of the Mission de France, a group founded in 1941 to work in poor French dioceses and now active in other countries as well.

It was five years after the dramatic kidnapping and murder of the Tibhirine monks that the local bishop asked Fr Lassause to take over the monastery to try to keep it and the surrounding farmland alive.

Once he arrived in Algeria, he set up a goat farm in the Sahrawi refugee camps.

"At the moment I live here together with a French-speaking Belgian, Frédéric the Thysebaert," says the missionary priest.

"He is responsible for welcoming visitors and taking care of the building, and I look after the contacts with the people in the region and work on the land. We eat together, pray together and celebrate daily Mass," he says.

Fr Lassausse is clearly pained by the security measures that local authorities impose on him.

"Constantly, day and night, guards are watching our front door from a distance", he says.

"We cannot leave the house without a police escort, which we have to ask for by letter," the priest laments.

"Every two weeks I have to go to the capital, Algiers, for pastoral duties and on my way back I always bring some groceries with me. During winter nothing grows in this region. So we eat a lot of pasta," he says, adding that winter lasts six months. It is currently covered in snow.

"Algiers is 82 kilometers (51 miles) away. But because we go through three different provinces, we have to change police escorts three times. So I have to deal with 36 police officers. That's frustrating, especially because they often do not show up on time. And then I have to write angry letters," he explains, saying he feels like a prisoner.

A few years ago his sheep were stolen.

"On the night between March 26 and 27, the anniversary of the monks' disappearance, all the sheep were gone, except for two - an obvious reference to the two surviving monks," Fr Lassausse says.

But he is not afraid.

"The good Lord and the people of the village will protect me and the monastery!" he says.

Of course he understands that he could be "a possible target, and that the current situation is complicated in the neighborhood," but he says his freedom is too restricted now by the authorities.

"It's for my own security - at least that's what they say," the Frenchman adds.

Fortunately, he has good contact with the 750 habitants of village and those living in the surroundings.

"Every day people knock at our door. Dozens a day - sometimes up to 100 or 150. They come because it is a place of freedom, a place where you are listened to," he says.

"Or they come to buy marmalade. Many also come to visit the tomb of Brother Luc, the former doctor of the convent that has left an indelible impression in the area," says Fr Lassausse, who has moved into Brother Luc's former pharmacy close to the monastery's entrance.

But he would prefer to sell his products at the local market.

"We make 32 kinds of jam from our 2000 fruit trees on the land. And we have apple juice, pear juice and some vegetables from the garden," he explains.

But because he is forbidden to wander outside the walls of the monastery a merchant passes each week to buy and to resell the products.

This French agronomist-priest would like to help set up a new monastic community in Tibhirine. Fifteen orders have been contacted already, but they all are afraid of the political situation, the security measures and the risks.

However, there is hope.

The French Catholic community "Chemin Neuf" with members from various Christian Churches is interested in sending some of its members to the former Trappist monastery.

"No decision has been taken yet, but there are serious talks and they have already visited," says Fr Lassausse.

"Maybe the first member of Chemin Neuf will come to live here in September, to see how it goes. And perhaps a second or a third will come later," he says hopefully.

In April the death of the seven monks will be commemorated discreetly, in the presence of members of their families.

Fr Lassausse says legacy of Tibhirine is alive: "It is important to show that people of different faiths can live together."

But he refuses to call the seven monks "martyrs of faith".

"No! They were martyrs of fidelity!" he insists.

"They remained here out of fidelity to God and to their vocation. They were also faithful to the place where they lived, since monks are called to be faithful to a concrete place. But most of all they were faithful to the people living here whom did not want to abandon," he marvels.

The French worker-priest continues this same faithfulness that he praises in the seven martyred monks.

He says he'll do so for "another few years, if needed."

Hendro Munsterman is a Dutch Catholic theologian who teaches in Lyon (France) and is a commentator on Vatican affairs for the Dutch national daily, "Nederlands Dagblad ".