Hero, priest, and sexual predator: the story of Abbé Pierre

Despite his heroism during the war and efforts to fight poverty, seven women, so far, accuse Abbé Pierre of various forms of sexual attack.

One of Abbé Pierre's victims was underage at the time of the attack; although the charities he founded sought an ongoing independent probe questions remain as to the extent of the sexual abuse.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

Abbé Pierre's would be the perfect story in France or any other country. A Roman Catholic priest who saved Jacques de Gaulle's life when the Gestapo came after him. Jacques was the younger brother of general Charles de Gaulle, the leader of France Libre, the French Resistance, and future head of State.

Then this priest joined the Free French Forces, the official label of the French Army during the war as a chaplain, traveling with them from North Africa to the United Kingdom, and from there back to France to join the Campaign of France.

After the war, already in the 1950s, he had been a member of the French National Assembly for two terms, a position he gave up to found Emmaus, a charity to fight homelessness, hunger, and other maladies in post-war France, a time when the old empire, from what is now Vietnam to Africa, crumbled. A time when there were poor French people sleeping in the streets of Paris and other cities.

In the early days of February 1954, when France suffered an extreme cold wave, with temperatures hitting records lows down to -25° Celsius (-13° Fahrenheit) and more than 85 centimeters (33 inches) of snow, Abbé Pierre issued an appeal to pay attention to the homeless and people facing the effects of the wave.

The appeal, carefully broadcast as the “insurrection of kindness” was successful enough to grant him the gratitude of the French and European public opinion. His appeal would be memorialized in news stories, short and long documentaries, and at least one biopic movie titled Hiver 54, l’Abbé Pierre (here at the Internet Movie Database, the IMDB, and here at the French-speaking Wikipedia) starred, in 1989, by global cinema star Claudia Cardinale.

French Establishment

No wonder Abbé Pierre’s entry at the IMDB has him with 38 credits as “Self”, seven more as “Archival footage”, on top of Cardinale’s movie, where the priest’s character was played by The Matrix’s saga Lambert Wilson.

If that was not enough, Abbé Pierre was close to those French clergymen who turned themselves into factory workers to live near their flock, the so-called priests-workers. Despite the obstacles they faced within the Church when they decided to leave the comforts of the curial houses for the hardships of the factories, they played a key role in getting the Church ready for the second Vatican Council that would happen in the sixties.

All through the second half of the 20th century, Abbé Pierre (born Henri Marie Joseph Grouès, on August 5th, 1912) remained a member of the French elites and establishment; a force the French bishops had to deal with, despite the differences they had as to what were the key priorities of the Church’s initiatives in public life.

He remained also an opinion leader who would lean into controversial issues affecting French and European politics up until his death in January 2007. Hence his early critique of the treatment migrants and their advocates deserved from the European authorities, and the role that up until today, his charities and the foundation named after him play in efforts to prevent the criminalization of migration and the criminalization of the help provided to migrants.

His status as member of the French resistance, his heroic deeds, and the many accomplishments of his calling for an “insurrection of kindness” raised the status of his funerals from a private to a very public matter, so public that then French President Jacques Chirac attended what was presented, despite the French laïcité, the strict separation between Church and State, as a State Funeral.

As the video linked immediately after shows, a handful of the then French bishops, led by Parisian archbishop and Cardinal André Armand Vingt-Trois presided over the mass and other rites at Notre Dame in Paris under the gaze of Chirac, members of his Cabinet, and personalities from all over the political spectrum in France.

Even if, as a sign of humility, his coffin stood at the floor in the Parisian Cathedral, Abbé Pierre remained up until 2023, a key figure in French culture, religion, and politics.

Insurrection of kindness?

Seven years after his death, his fame was such that French and European media were celebrating the 60th anniversary of his appeal to the “insurrection of kindness”, as a civic and somehow religious date to remember, as the image after this paragraph shows.

The image, a screenshot from a brief story published back in 2014 by French weekly magazine and website L’Humanité, is just one example of the long-lasting effects of Abbé Pierre’s charisma that allowed him to build the French charity Emmaus, and Emmaus International, a global network of sister charities, with some kind of footing in 40 countries, on top of the Abbé Pierre Foundation.

Still, by 2023, as a byproduct of the scandals leading to the publication of the Sauvé Report, the study commissioned back in 2018 by the French conference of Roman Catholic bishops, at least one victim denounced Abbé Pierre’s aggression towards her.

Originally, the Foundation, Emmaus France, and Emmaus International, conducted an internal probe on their own. However, by February of this year, they requested the help of the Group Egae.

Egae is a French private entity, an agency specialized on “counseling, education, and communication on equality, the fight against discrimination, and preventing sexual violence” to open a “hearing mechanism” for what was already known by then, was not only one but several victims of Abbé Pierre.

The mechanism will remain open until the end of this year, so the document issued on July 17th, 2024, aptly titled Investigation report (available only in French here) is a preliminary account on what is known up until now.

Laurent Desmard, a lay male, former secretary of Abbé Pierre and a key figure in the foundation named after his former boss was the first to provide public confirmation of Abbé Pierre’s sexual aggressions toward females under his care and/or working for the charities under his helm.

Desmard did it during an interview in TV5 Monde, a French public television service broadcasting outside of France over both paid TV services and YouTube aired on January 31st of this year.

Although the interview was originally presented as a memorial of the 70th anniversary of Abbé Pierre’s calling the “insurrection of kindness”, as the message in what used to be Twitter before this paragraph shows, in the end, Desmard’s acknowledgment of the abuses perpetrated by his former boss became the heading for the video at YouTube, as can be seen after this paragraph in the video available only in French.

National shock

It should not surprise that, last week when the preliminary report was published, French media, both Catholic as La Croix or La Vie or civil as Libération, Le Figaro, Le Monde or Le Point, highlighted the story of the hero-priest who, despite his accomplishments, joins the scores of clergy sexual predators asphyxiating the Roman Catholic Church.

More so because, unlike Marcial Maciel, and other predator priests who were the protagonists of the initial stages of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, Abbé Pierre was not a brown-noser, a cleric obsessed with his own career in the Church. He resigned to the political career he could have had in the proximity of General De Gaulle.

Also, because, as a confirmation of how lost is the Roman Catholic hierarchy when dealing with the root causes of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, his victims are all females, six of the seven we know about up until now, were adults.

So, as with other cases in the “new” trend of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, the seven victims of Abbé Pierre are not underage boys, but females, six of them adults. Putting aside the single minor in that group, Abbé Pierre’s victims were so not because they were vulnerable due to physical or mental impairment.

They became vulnerable because they were dealing with what a larger-than-life character. A real hero of the French Resistance; a priest who many saw as some sort of “living saint,” as one can see in many comments in videos where Abbé Pierre appears over at YouTube.

In the video from his funerals already linked above, as one of many possible examples, when one dives into the comments posted there, it is possible to find messages calling, more than five years ago, describing him as a saint (comment 1), calling for his canonization (comment 2),or identifying him as the “last great figure of humanism” (comment 3), as the image below shows. The comments in the image are in French.

On top of that, he was a very influential political figure, with direct access to media figures who expressed their admiration and gratitude to him when interviewing him. That is where the difficulties to inform about sexual violence and abuse lie for the victims of sexual.

Credibility complex, again

It is what Deborah Tuerkheimer has called in his book Credible. Why we doubt accusers and protect abusers the “credibility complex.” Said idea summarizes the kind of challenges that victims of sexual abuse, clergy or otherwise, confront when bringing their cases to the attention of the police, the district attorney, judges, and juries in the systems where trials by jury exist.

The only positive aspect of the Abbé Pierre case is that the leaders of the three institutions created by him, Emmaus France, Emmaus International, and the Foundation bearing his name, decided to bring Egae in and set up the “hearing mechanism”.

What is next for them, is to set up a credible mechanism to compensate the damages inflicted to the victims.

However, we do not know if more victims will come forward. We are also unaware of what potential changes would come in the French laws or judiciary practice as a consequence of this case.

We do not know also what changes this case could force on the Church. Will the bishops acknowledge the reality of the lasting effects of clergy sexual abuse and the moral obligation of the institutions to address the consequences.

Meanwhile, in Colombia

It is worth mentioning that almost at the same time that the details of the Abbé Pierre probe emerged in France, on the other side of the world, in Colombia, the bishop of the diocese of Tierradentro, Óscar Augusto Múnera Ochoa, resigned his position.

The news about his resignation is relevant because he did so on Saturday, July 20th, less than two months after his 62nd birthday. What is worse, back on May 2024, Miguel Ángel Estupiñán and Juan Pablo Barrientos updated previous accusations they published in Spanish-speaking media in both Colombia and Spain.

The accusations were so consistent that Rome forced the resignation of the now bishop emeritus but, as it is standard practice in the Catholic Church, with no explanation as to why Múnera Ochoa was giving up his position more than ten years before reaching the 75-year-old mark.

Also, there is no indication of any restriction placed on Múnera Ochoa's ministry as bishop emeritus and, more significantly, there is no indication as to whether him as an individual, the dioceses where he has served as both priest and bishop (Santa Rosa de Osos and Tierradentro) or the conference of Roman Catholic bishops of Colombia will acknowledge the extent of the damage done by the now former bishop and if they will provide some assistance or compensation to those affected by his behavior.

It is worth mentioning that, on top of the accusations of sexual abuse against Múnera Ochoa, there is also an accusation about death threats coming from the now bishop emeritus of Tierradentro, as Miguel Ángel Estupiñán details in this story in Spanish.

In that regard, the way Emmaus France, Emmaus International, and the Abbé Pierre Foundation dealt with their founder's abuses stand as an improvement as far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, but it is clear that their attitude is not what one sees in other countries and cases.

In previous stories published in this series dealing with clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, Los Ángeles Press has compared the response to clergy sexual abuse in the state of California in the United States, and in Baja California and Baja California Sur in Mexico, as the stories linked above and next prove.

Los Ángeles Press also compared the response between the diocese of El Paso, Texas, and its sister Roman Catholic diocese of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, as the story linked below shows.

When comparing the attitude regarding the abuse perpetrated by Abbé Pierre in France and the attitude that one sees in Latin American countries, what strikes the most is the disdain with which the bishops and other Catholic leaders in Latin America behave when dealing with sexual abuse.

The ghost of Marcial Maciel

This is not something new. It is not as if they were unaware of what happens. Yesterday, The Associated Press published a story about how aware was the Roman curia of Marcial Maciel’s abuses during Pius XII's (1939-58) pontificate. That was the period when he was founding the so-called Legion of Christ religious "order".

Pius XII's pontificate was the precise moment when Maciel founded under false assumptions an order with little or no oversight from his superiors in Mexico. The story published by The Associated Press proves, once again how easy has been for predator clerics, from almost any country, to set up institutions designed to facilitate the systematic abuse of both males and females.

In one paragraph, that story details how, according to a memo from October 1st 1956:

Maciel had a great protector in the Vatican in the form of Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo.

Pizzardo was the ultimate insider of the Roman curia and second in command at the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He joined the Roman curia when he was 43 years-old and he never left. The only changes for him were promotions. When Paul VI appointed him bishop of Albano, Italy in 1966, he was already 89 years-old, and he only was there for less than two years, as he returned to Rome to become the prefect of the Congregation of Seminaries and Universities.

Bishop Múnera Ochoa’s case highlights yet another pattern emerging as far as the clergy sexual abuse crisis was concerned. It used to be that Pope Francis would force out bishops appointed by his predecessors. Now, after little more than eleven years as Pope, Francis is forcing out of office bishops he appointed.

That was the case in the Argentine archdiocese of La Plata, the see that was once held by Víctor Manuel Tucho Fernández, now the head of the dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, that Los Ángeles Press covered with some detail a few weeks ago, linked below.

Sadly enough, despite his attitude much more receptive, less dogmatic, Pope Francis has been unable to bring any justice to the victims of bishops he already appointed, as it was Múnera Ochoa’s case, who Francis appointed as bishop already in July 2015, two years after his election as Pope.

In that regard on top of the fact that there is little or no indication about some real punishment for Múnera Ochoa, something beyond being forced out of office, there is no indication as to how will him or the bishops in Colombia compensate his victims.

His case, just as the new revelations from Maciel’s prove that even if the Church is aware of the many abuses perpetrated by serial predators as Maciel was already in the 1950s, there are other, up until now, unknown criteria, considered by the bishops in each country and their superiors in Rome when deciding what “orders” or congregations are authorized, as in Maciel’s case, or what priests are promoted to bishop, as in Múnera Ochoa’s case.

Also, Abbé Pierre’s case should be a warning about the ways in which the Roman Catholic Church deals with the clergy sexual abuse crisis. Even if he was exempt of the attitudes of known predators marked by their careerism and clericalist arrogance as Maciel or Fernando Karadima in Mexico and Chile, when going over the testimonies we have now from Abbé Pierre’s victim is clear that the three of them share a dismissive attitude towards their victims.

In that regard, it is impossible to assume that Pope Francis’s recipe to address the clergy sexual abuse crisis, centered in the critique of the pervasive effects of clericalism, is enough.