When Abbé Pierre died in 2007 he was mourned around the world by the great and the good. A champion of the homeless for decades, and a committed campaigner against nuclear weapons and colonisation, the 94-year-old Catholic priest was regarded as one of the great figures of the second half of the 20th century.
Abbé Pierre – real name Henri Grouès - was accorded a day of "national homage" in his native France, and among the mourners at his funeral ceremony at Notre Dame Cathedral were President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the mayor or the city and a host of celebrities.
"Abbé Pierre showed us the way of the heart, of generosity, of the spirit of rebellion to help the most vulnerable," <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6301623.stm"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">said</mark></a> president Chirac. "His message must stay alive in each of us and it is up to all of us to follow it through."
For the next seventeen years the message maintained by his eponymous foundation, the Abbé Pierre Foundation, and by the Emmaus (in French: Emmaüs) anti-poverty charity, which the priest launched in 1949, was that Abbé Pierre was a man of rare virtue.
Then in July 2024 the truth was revealed. "French priest accused of sexual assaults" <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7955vg9w8o"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">ran the headline</mark></a> on the <em>BBC</em> website.
The revelations were disclosed by Emmaus, the charity that once had been so proud of its founder. “These acts profoundly change the way we regard this man, who was known above all for his struggle against poverty, destitution and exclusion,” they said in a statement.
The acts were the sexual assault of seven women between 1970 and 2005. An enquiry was launched and more women came forward with their own horrendous accounts of abuse inflicted them on by Abbé Pierre.
The enquiry’s report confirmed seventeen cases of assault, harassment and rape but said there many more testimonies; these had been omitted from the report because they were given anonymously or the complainants were reluctant to revisit the abuse in depth.
There were <a href="https://international.la-croix.com/religion/abbe-pierre-new-testimonies-including-rape-of-minor-brought-to-light-by-new-report"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">more disclosures</mark></a> last week of Abbé Pierre’s depravity, including a report of incestuous sexual assault and the rape of a 9-year-old boy.
On Friday, 17 January, the Catholic Church in France asked prosecutors to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-catholic-church-calls-probe-into-late-priest-abbe-pierres-alleged-sexual-2025-01-17/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">open an official investigation</mark></a> into the allegations. Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, President of the French Bishops’ Conference, said it was important to discover how Abbe Pierre got away with his crimes and to pinpoint who was responsible for the "failure to report rape and sexual assault on vulnerable people and minors".
If the police do launch an investigation it is likely to be damaging for the Church and also the charities associated with Abbé Pierre. Last year the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church claimed that the French Church’s national archives contain “documents from the 1950s and 1960s on Abbé Pierre's sexual compulsions”.
In the wake of the initial disclosures about the priest, French journalists launched their own investigation and soon <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/enquetes-franceinfo/enquete-quand-l-abbe-pierre-menacait-ceux-qui-denoncaient-ses-agissements_6770512.html"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">discovered</mark></a> from digging into archives that Abbé Pierre’s behaviour had indeed first been flagged in the 1950s.
On a trip to the United States in May 1955 – the highlight of which was an audience with President Eisenhower at the White House – several complaints were made against him by women in New York, Washington and Chicago. The allegations were transmitted to the cardinals of Chicago and New York, and it was decided to cut short Abbé Pierre’s stay in the States.
It would seem the conduct of the priest in the USA was relayed to the Church in France; a "<em>socius</em>" [companion/guide] was appointed to accompany him on future trips. The <em>socius</em> was Prosper Monier, and he was soon ringing alarm bells.
In a letter sent to Abbé Pierre in January 1958, Prosper Monier told the Abbé that he had spoken to the Bishop of Grenoble [the diocese where Pierre was ordained] and "like everyone else, he wants you to go into hiding for a year. It would be a boost to your moral and physical strength".
Abbé Pierre went to a clinic in Switzerland but he emerged unreformed.
In 1959 he visited Quebec, and this time the police interviewed the priest after allegations of lewd behaviour. He subsequently wrote to Reverend Roy, a Quebec cardinal, assuring him that “everything is false in these accusations".
Abbé Pierre then deployed a tactic that he had first used in the USA and which would become a trademark response: the threat of legal action.
In 1963 he was back in Quebec and, according to the renowned French theologian André Paul, he “sexually abused women in Montreal”. The police again got involved but the Cardinal of Montreal intervened, striking a deal with the authorities that “Abbé Pierre would not be prosecuted, on condition that he never set foot in the country again".
The fact that Abbé Pierre had got away with his misconduct emboldened him; he became more depraved, feeling himself untouchable, a sentiment that strengthened as the sexual and social revolutions swept the West in the late 1960s. The world became less inhibited – "It is Forbidden to Forbid", as the French students cried in 1968 – and Abbé Pierre took full advantage.
By now he was so famous that his victims were too intimidated to come forward. A woman who was eight when she was assaulted in the early 1970s, <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/envoye-special/video-je-ressens-encore-ses-mains-sur-moi-sa-langue-dans-ma-bouche-en-1973-l-abbe-pierre-aurait-agresse-sexuellement-une-enfant-de-8-ans-elle-temoigne-aujourd-hui-dans-envoye-special_7017695.html"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">told</mark></a> the press last week: “Several times I've wanted to shout to the world that this man isn't who he says he is. But who would have believed me? People weren't ready to hear that about Abbé Pierre.”
They are now, and what they are hearing is a stain on the consciousness of the Church and of society in general, which for over half a century turned a blind eye to the monstrous crimes of Abbé Pierre.
<em>Photo: A portrait of Abbé Pierre in the Emmaus community of Pollestres, Pyrenees-Orientales, France, 30 July 2024. (Photo by ARNAUD LE VU/Hans Lucas via AFP/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
