Abbé Pierre

Abbé Pierre, OFM Cap, (born Henri Marie Joseph Grouès; 5 August 191222 January 2007) was a French Catholic priest, member of the Resistance during World War II, and deputy of the Popular Republican Movement (MRP).

In 1949, he founded the Emmaus movement, with the goal of helping poor and homeless people and refugees. He was one of the most popular figures in France but had his name removed from such polls after some time.
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Youth and education

Grouès was born on 5 August 1912 in Lyon, France to a wealthy Catholic family of silk traders, the fifth of eight children. His aunt was the writer Héra Mirtel. He spent his childhood in Irigny, near Lyon. He was twelve when he met François Chabbey and went for the first time with his father to an Order circle, the brotherhood of the ''" Hospitaliers veilleurs"'' in which the mainly middle-class members would serve the poor by providing barber services.

Grouès became a member of the ''Scouts de France'' in which he was nicknamed "Meditative Beaver" (''Castor méditatif''). In 1928, aged 16, he made the decision to join a monastic order, but he had to wait until he was seventeen and a half to fulfill this ambition. In 1931 Grouès entered the Capuchin Order, the principal offshoot of the Franciscans, renouncing his inheritances and offering all his possessions to charities.

Known as ''frère Philippe'' (Brother Philippe), he entered the monastery of Crest in 1932, where he lived for seven years. He had to leave in 1939 after developing severe lung infections, which made the strict and hard monastic life difficult to cope with. He became chaplain to the hospital of La Mure (Isère), and then of an orphanage in the Côte-Saint-André (also in the Isère department). After being ordained a Roman Catholic priest on 24 August 1938, he became curate of Grenoble's cathedral in April 1939, only a few months before the invasion of Poland.

The Jesuit Fr. Henri de Lubac told him on the day of his priestly ordination: "ask the Holy Spirit to grant you the same anti-clericalism of the saints."

World War II

When World War II broke out in 1939, he was mobilised as a non-commissioned officer in the train transport corps. According to his official biography, he helped Jewish people to escape Nazi persecution following the July 1942 mass arrests in Paris, called the '' Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv'', and another raid in the area of Grenoble in the non-occupied zone: "In July 1942, two fleeing Jews asked him for help. Having discovered the persecution taking place, he immediately went to learn how to make false passports. Starting in August 1942, he guided Jewish people to Switzerland".

His pseudonym dates from his work with the French Resistance during the Second World War, when he operated under several different names. Based in Grenoble, an important center of the Resistance, he helped Jews and politically persecuted escape to Switzerland. In 1942, he assisted Jacques de Gaulle (the brother of Charles de Gaulle) and his wife escape to Switzerland.Il aurait mérité dix fois d'être fait "Juste parmi les nations"
testimony of Jean-Claude Duclos, curator of the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation de l'Isère, in ''Libération'', 25 January 2007

He participated in establishing a section of the ''maquis'' where he officially became one of the local leaders in the Vercors Plateau and in the Chartreuse Mountains. He helped people to avoid being taken into the ''Service du travail obligatoire'' (STO), the Nazi forced-labour program agreed upon with Pierre Laval, by creating in Grenoble the first refugee for resistants to the STO; he founded the clandestine newspaper ''L'Union patriotique indépendante''.L'insurgé de la bonté
''L'Humanité'', 23 January 2007 In ''Le Monde''s obituary, in English
"ABBÉ PIERRE, FOUNDER OF EMMAÜS, IS DEAD"
, 23 January 2007

) For a time, in 1943, he was given shelter by Lucie Coutaz, a Resistance member who later became his secretary and was his assistant in his charity work until her death in 1982.

He was arrested twice, once in 1944 by the Nazi police in the city of Cambo-les-Bains in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, but was quickly released and travelled to Spain then Gibraltar before joining the Free French Forces of General de Gaulle in Algeria. In the Free North Africa, he became a chaplain in the French Navy on the battleship ''Jean Bart'' in Casablanca. He had become an important character and symbol of the French Resistance.

At the end of the war, he was awarded the ''Croix de guerre 1939-1945'' with bronze palms and the ''Médaille de la Résistance''. Like other members of the Resistance, his experience would mark him for life, teaching him the necessity of engaging himself to protect fundamental human rights through legal means and, if need be, through a sort of civil disobedience doctrine.

Political career (1945–51) and the 1960s/70s

When the war was over, following de Gaulle's entourage's advice and the approbation of the archbishop of Paris, Abbé Pierre was elected deputy for Meurthe-et-Moselle department in both National Constituent Assemblies in 1945–1946 as an independent close to the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), mainly consisting of Christian democratic members of the Resistance. In 1946, he was re-elected as a member of the National Assembly, but this time as a member of the MRP. Abbé Pierre became vice-president of the World Federalist Movement in 1947, a universal federalist movement.

After a bloody accident resulting in the death of a blue-collar worker, Édouard Mazé, in Brest in 1950, Abbé Pierre decided to put an end to his MRP affiliation on 28 April 1950, writing a letter titled ''"Pourquoi je quitte le MRP"'' ("Why I quit the MRP"), where he denounced the political and social attitude of the MRP party. He then joined the Christian socialist movement named ''Ligue de la jeune République'', created in 1912 by Marc Sangnier, but decided to finally end his political career. In 1951, before the end of his mandate, he returned to his first vocation: to help homeless people. With the small indemnities he received as a deputy, he invested in a run-down house near Paris in the wealthy Neuilly-Plaisance neighbourhood. Astounding his neighbours, the priest began to repair the roof and the whole house, and finally made of it the first Emmaüs base (because, according to him, it was simply too big for one person).

Although the Abbé then put a definitive end to his involvement in representative politics, preferring to invest his energies in the Emmaus charity movement, he never completely abandoned the political field, taking strong stances on many and various subjects.

Thus, when the decolonization movement was slowly beginning to emerge in the whole world, he attempted in 1956 to convince Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba to obtain independence without using violence. Present in various international conferences at the end of the 1950s, he met Colombian priest Camilo Torres (1929–1966), a predecessor of Liberation theology, who asked for his advice on the Colombian Church's criticism of "workers' priests." He was also received by US president Eisenhower and Mohammed V of Morocco in 1955 and 1956.
In 1962 he resided for several months in Charles de Foucauld's retreat in Béni-Abbés (Algeria).

The Abbé was then called to India in 1971 by Jayaprakash Narayan to represent, along with the ''Ligue des droits de l'homme'' (Human Rights League) France in the issues of refugees. Indira Gandhi then invited him to deal with the question of Bengali refugees, and the Abbé founded Emmaus communities in Bangladesh.

Emmaus

1949: the origin

Emmaus (''Emmaüs'' in French) was started in 1949. Its name is a reference to a village in Israel appearing in the Gospel of Luke, where two disciples extended hospitality to Jesus just after his resurrection without recognizing him. In that way, Emmaus's mission is to help poor and homeless people. It is a secular organization. In 1950 the first community of Emmaus companions was created in Neuilly-Plaisance close to Paris in France. The Emmaus community raises funds for the construction of housing by selling used goods. "Emmaus, it's a little like the wheelbarrow, the shovels and the pickaxes coming before the banners. A sort of social fuel derived from salvaging defeating men."

There were initial difficulties raising funds, so in 1952, Abbé Pierre decided to be a contestant on the Radio Luxembourg game show ''Quitte ou double'' (''Double or Nothing'') for the prize money; he ended up winning 256,000 francs.

Winter 1954: "Uprising of kindness"

Abbé Pierre became famous during the extremely cold winter of 1954 in France, when homeless people were dying in the streets. Following the failure of the projected law on lodgings, he gave a well-remembered speech on Radio Luxembourg on 1 February 1954, and asked ''Le Figaro'', a conservative newspaper which, as he said, was read by "the powerful", to publish his call:

The next morning, the press wrote of an "uprising of kindness" (''insurrection de la bonté'') and the now-famous call for help ended up raising 500 million francs in donations (Charlie Chaplin gave 2 million). This enormous amount was totally unexpected; telephone operators and the postal service were overwhelmed, and owing to the volume of donations, several weeks were needed just to sort them, distribute them, and find a place to stock them throughout the country. Moreover, this call attracted volunteers from all over the country to help them, including wealthy '' bourgeoises'' who were emotionally shaken by the Abbé's call: first to do the redistribution, but then to duplicate the effort all around France. Quite quickly, Abbé Pierre had to organise his movement by creating the ''Emmaus communities'' on 23 March 1954.

In an Emmaus community, volunteers help homeless people by giving them accommodation, and somewhere to eat and work. A number of Emmaus volunteers are also formerly homeless people themselves, from all age groups, religious or ethnic origins, and social backgrounds. The Abbé Pierre strived to show desperate people that they too could help others, and thus that the weak could still help even weaker people.

A book was written by Boris Simon which described the misery of poor ragpicker communities, called "Abbé Pierre and the ragpickers of Emmaus" which helped spread knowledge about the Emmaus community.
In 1955 Abbé Pierre gives president Eisenhower an English translation of the book, in the oval office.

The Emmaus communities quickly spread worldwide. The Abbé traveled to Beyrouth (Beirut, Lebanon) in 1959, to assist in the creation of the first multiconfessional Emmaus group there; it was founded by a Sunni (Muslim), a Melkite (Catholic) archbishop and a Maronite (Christian) writer.

1980s to 2000s

After the 1981 election of President François Mitterrand (Socialist Party, PS) (during which he called for blank vote), the Abbé Pierre supported the initiative of the French Premier Laurent Fabius (PS) to create in 1984 the ''Revenu minimum d'insertion'' (RMI), a welfare system for indigents.Le diable et le Bon Dieu
''Le Figaro'', 26 January 2007

The same year, he organized the operation "Charity Christmas", which, relayed by ''France Soir'', brought 6 million Francs and 200 tons of products. The actor Coluche, who had organized the charitable '' Restos du Cœur'', offered him 150 million French cents received by his organisation. Coluche's huge success with the Restos du Cœur, caused by his popularity (Coluche had even tried to present himself to the 1981 presidential election before withdrawing), convinced the Abbé again of the necessity and value of such charitable struggles and the usefulness of the media in such endeavours.

In 1983, he spoke with Italian President Sandro Pertini to plead the cause of Vanni Mulinaris, imprisoned on charge of assistance to the Red Brigades (BR), and even observed eight days of hunger strike from 26 May to 3 June 1984 in the Cathedral of Turin to protest against detention conditions of "Brigadists" in Italian prisons and the imprisonment without trial of Vanni Mulinaris, who was recognized innocent sometimes afterwards. Italian magistrate Carlo Mastelloni recalled in the ''Corriere della Sera'' in 2007 that a niece of the Abbé was a secretary at Hyperion language school in Paris, directed by Vanni Mulinaris, and married to one of the Italians refugees then wanted by the Italian justice.«Quel giorno in Tribunale con lui Difese i terroristi rossi e l' Hyperion»
, ''Corriere della Sera'', 23 January 2007 According to the ''Corriere della Sera'', it would even have been him who convinced then president François Mitterrand to grant protection from extradition to left-wing Italian activists who took refuge in France and had broken with their past.

More than 20 years later, the ANSA, Italian press agency, recalled that he had supported in 2005 one of his physicians, Michele d'Auria, who was a former member of ''Prima Linea'', an Italian far-left group, and was accused of having participated in hold-ups during 1990. Like many other Italian activists, he had exiled himself to France during the " years of lead", and then joined the Emmaus companions. ''La Repubblica'' specified that Italian justice has recognized the innocence of all people close to the Hyperion School

Following the Abbé's death in January 2007, Italian magistrate Carlo Mastelloni declared to the ''Corriere della Sera'' that during the abduction of Aldo Moro Abbé Pierre had gone to the Christian Democrats' headquarters in Rome in an attempt to speak with its secretary Benigno Zaccagnini, in favor of a "hard line" of refusal of negotiations along with the BR.

In 1988 Abbé Pierre met representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to discuss the difficult financial, monetary and human issues brought by the huge Third World debt (starting in 1982, Mexico had announced it could not pay the service of its debt, triggering the 1980s Latin American debt crisis). In the 1990s, the Abbé criticized the apartheid regime in South Africa. In 1995, after a three-year-long siege of Sarajevo, he went there to exhort nations of the world to put an end to the violence, and requested French military operation against the Serb positions in Bosnia.

During the Gulf War (1990–91), the Abbé directly addressed himself to US President George H. W. Bush and Iraq President Saddam Hussein. He asked French president François Mitterrand to engage himself in matters concerning refugees, in particular by the creation of a stronger organisation than the current UN High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR). He encountered this year the Dalai Lama during inter-religious peace encounters. A staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, he has attracted attention with some of his statements on the Israeli-Palestine conflictNation to honour French activist
''BBC
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