Henri Grouès, the most popular man in France, died last month aged 94. He was universally known and admired as Abbé Pierre, a Catholic priest who campaigned tirelessly for the disadvantaged and homeless.
He became Abbé Pierre in 1942, a false name to hide his true identity when he joined the French Resistance in Grenoble, where he was a curate. Abbé Pierre ran an escape network for the children and siblings of Jews arrested by the collaborationist Vichy regime, who handed them over to the Germans to be sent to concentration camps. Among those he rescued was Jacques de Gaulle, brother of the Free French leader and future president, Charles de Gaulle. Arrested by the Gestapo, the Abbé escaped and joined the Free French in Algeria.
Abbé Pierre leapt to fame in the winter of 1954, when he dramatically described in a national radio broadcast how a young woman, forced by bailiffs to leave her home on the Boulevard Sébastopol in Paris, had frozen to death in the street during the night, still clutching her eviction papers.
This added huge momentum to the Compagnons Emmaüs, a movement founded by the Abbé to inspire the wealthy to gain spiritual comfort by helping the economically deprived, in a practical partnership that rebuilt the poor’s self-esteem. It now operates in more than 40 countries, its work aptly summed up by one of them as ‘giving people a bed and a reason to get out of it’.
Abbé Pierre disappeared from public life until 1984 when, 30 years after his original broadcast, he made another to complain that the number of French homeless had increased, not decreased, despite government claims to the contrary. His fame, or perhaps notoriety, steadily increased as the Abbé helped a militant group of homeless break into an empty building and create a squat in one of the richest districts of Paris. Soon he was regularly at the top of an annual poll to determine the most popular personality in France, until four years ago when he pleaded not to be placed on the short list, saying it was time the French found a younger hero.
Abbé Pierre took on the establishment of the Catholic church, campaigning against their strictures on contraception and homosexuality. He criticized the concept of chastity for priests, admitting that he had broken the vow of chastity himself on a few occasions. This provoked uproar in the church but only served to make the Abbé more popular than ever.
Abbé Pierre became highly skilled at using his popularity for good but was aware of the pitfalls of celebrity. ‘If you want to play a dirty trick on someone,’ he said, ‘make them famous’. Only once did he fail to avoid the risk he had identified. In 1996 he defended a book that claimed Israel had exaggerated the scale of the Holocaust, not realizing it was sponsored by a group that denied the Holocaust’s very existence. Much later, after offering an unreserved apology, he explained he had meant to say that while the Holocaust was an abomination, it could not justify some of the extreme policies of the Israeli government.
Although Abbé Pierre did not live to see it, France has just published draft legislation to give all its citizens a legally enforceable right to have a roof over their head. It will be called the “Loi Pierre”. With almost 100,000 registered homeless people in France, no doubt the Abbé would enjoy the compliment but regard the new law as too little, too late.
