PARIS (FRANCE)
Connexion France [Monte-Carlo Monaco]
November 17, 2024
By Samantha David
Celebrated anti-poverty and homelessness campaigner Abbé Pierre was voted France’s most popular person for many years, but sexual abuse accusations have shattered the activist priest’s crusading legacy
Saint or demon? Hero or criminal? Friend of the poorest or their ultimate nightmare? France is in shock as it realises that the founder of Emmaüs was a sexual predator.
Born to a wealthy bourgeois Catholic family in Lyon, the birth name of Abbé Pierre (1912-2007) was Henri Grouès.
He began doing charity work with the Catholic church as a child, and in 1931 he joined the Capuchin Order, giving up his inheritance to charity and taking vows of poverty and chastity.
As a monk in the Monastery of Crest, he was called Frère Philippe. He became a priest in 1938 but had to leave the monastery in 1939 due to a severe lung infection.
He became the curate of the cathedral in Grenoble just a few months before World War Two broke out, when he was mobilised as a non-commissioned officer into the transport corps.
Resistance hero
He spent most of the war in France, where he forged passports and helped Jews escape to Switzerland.
As part of the Resistance, he also helped people avoid forced labour for the Nazis, and founded an underground Resistance newspaper.
He was twice arrested before escaping from France to Spain, and then to Algeria where he became a chaplain in the French Navy.
He met Resistance worker Lucie Coutaz in 1943 and after the war she became his assistant and worked closely with him until her death in 1982.
After the war, he launched himself into a political career and became a Socialist MP, but by 1951 he had returned to charity work.
He managed to buy a run-down house on the outskirts of Paris, where he lived and offered accommodation to homeless people.
Read more: France’s Abbé Pierre accused of sexual assault by seven women
Help and employment
He later described in various books he wrote how he was called to help a man who was teetering on the brink of committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. Arriving on the scene, he recounted how the desperate man said he didn’t want to live.
“If you don’t want your life, then give it to me,” said Abbé Pierre. “I need it. I need you to work with me saving homeless people. I can’t do it all myself. I need you to mend the house, mend the broken furniture so people can move in.”
The story goes that the man, Georges, eventually left the bridge and began working with Abbé Pierre to help the homeless, and this experience is what inspired the Abbé to provide paid employment as well as accommodation.
Compagnons d’Emmaüs typically live in residential Emmaus centres and work repairing donated furniture and other domestic items to sell in the organisation’s salerooms. Others work as cooks or sales assistants.
They are paid SMIC (minimum wage) from which they can then pay their board and rent at Emmaüs, and they receive all the standard benefits including paid holidays, healthcare and retirement contributions.
The aim is not only to feed and house people but to restore their self-respect and confidence. The name Emmaüs is mentioned in the Bible as the village where Jesus reappeared to his disciples after he was crucified.
Choosing it is an indication that Abbé Pierre and Emmaüs co-founder Lucie Coutaz wanted their centres to be a refuge where people could rediscover Jesus, although the movement is completely secular.
Progressive views
Abbé Pierre wasn’t a conventional priest. Fervently left-wing and progressive, he frequently clashed with Catholic ideology, arguing for priests to be able to marry and for the ordination of women.
He also advocated for world peace, for immigrants’ and refugees’ rights, for the abolition of South African apartheid, for Palestinian rights, and for the rights of same-sex couples. He opposed the traditional Catholic anti-contraceptive stance, and criticised Pope John Paul II for his expensive travels.
When it came to funding his fledgling organisation, he raised cash however he could. In 1952, he even appeared as a contestant on a radio show during which he won 256,000 francs.
He lobbied tirelessly for social justice. The winter of 1953/4 was particularly cold, and more than one rough sleeper died on the streets of Paris.
Abbe Pierre’s 1954 speech
In February 1954, Abbé Pierre radio broadcast an impassioned speech describing how an evicted woman had frozen to death on the Boulevard de Sébastopol still clutching her eviction notice.
Ministries were needed, he declared, “in every town in France, in every quarter of Paris” help was needed based on the simple words, “If you suffer, whoever you are, enter, eat, sleep, recover hope. Here you are loved.”
The broadcast caused an outpouring of generosity, and the response was unprecedented. Charlie Chaplin donated two million francs.
“I’m not giving them to you. I’m giving them back. They belong to the vagabond that I was, and that I embodied,” he said.
Money and donations in kind poured in. The papers called it an Insurrection de la Bonté (‘Uprising of Kindness’) and people all over the country volunteered to help.
Global growth
The network of Emmaüs communities was born on March 23rd, 1954 – and quickly spread to other countries.
Today, Emmaüs International is divided in four; Africa (Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Togo and Tunisia); America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, US, Uruguay); Asia (Bangladesh, India, Lebanon, Turkey); and Europe (Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the UK).
As a result of the Insurrection de la Bonté, two years later the law introducing the trêve hibernale was passed and is still in force today. The ‘Loi du 3 décembre 1956’ makes it illegal to evict a tenant for any reason whatsoever between November 1st and March 31st the following year.
Emmaüs community
Abbé Pierre travelled widely, and in 1963 was in a shipwreck at sea.
For several days before he was rescued the papers announced that he was dead, and this made him realise that he should take steps to ensure that Emmaüs would survive and continue without him. This took several years because the organisation had grown so spontaneously and organically.
As he was able to step back from the day-to-day running of Emmaüs, Abbé Pierre increased his political activism.
In 1984 he strongly supported the creation of the ‘Revenu Minimum d’Insertion’ (RMI) and he organised the operation ‘Charity Christmas’ which raised six million francs, and 200 tons of products.
The actor Coluche, who had founded the charitable Restos du Coeur donated 150 million cents collected by his organisation.
He was voted France’s most popular person for many years, until in 2003 footballer Zinedine Zidane took that title, relegating Abbé Pierre to second place. He was showered with prizes and awards.
Abbe Pierre’s dark side
And yet behind closed doors, it was a different story. Complaints of unwanted sexual approaches, sexual touching and other abuses had been made since at least the 1950s.
Abbé Pierre himself had openly confessed to having broken his vows of chastity on more than one occasion although he claimed not to have formed any formal relationship with a woman.
People who worked with him formed the habit of warning women to avoid being alone with him. In the 50s he spent several periods in clinics and psychiatric hospitals, which was the Catholic church’s way of dealing with ‘deviant priests’.
He was assigned two chaperones/spiritual advisors in 1957, and his ability to travel was limited.
In 1980 an employee of Emmaüs reported an assault, as did a woman in Belgium in 1981.
The church was resolute in hushing the rumours, but in 2007 Jean-Christophe d’Escaut accused him of having tried to touch his sister’s breasts in 1984.
A singer claimed he undressed in front of her in 1985, and again in 1991.
A woman alleged that between 1989 and 1990 he made her his sexual object, committing sex acts in front of her, demanding oral sex and asking to be whipped.
Abbé Pierre died in 2007 and is buried in the cemetery of the small village of Esteville.
Future for Emmaüs
In July 2024, Emmaüs International published an eight-page report written by feminist Caroline de Haas which includes statements from seven women who were assaulted between the late 1970s and 2005.
An eighth woman came forward stating that she and other nurses had been assaulted in 2006, when the Abbé, aged 93, was undergoing treatment in hospital.
At least 10 other women came forward with similar statements, and in September more assaults were reported. It is safe to say these harrowing testimonies are the tip of the iceberg.
The man who did so much to help people was also a sexual predator who attacked vulnerable women and girls for decades.
Emmaüs France, Emmaüs International, and the Abbé Pierre Foundation are all erasing his name from their charters. They are also working on plans to compensate the victims.