French bishops seek Abbé Pierre cover-up probe
The president of the French bishops’ conference has asked prosecutors to investigate whether alleged abuse by the late Abbé Pierre was covered up.
The president of the French bishops’ conference announced Friday that he has asked prosecutors to investigate whether alleged abuse by the late Abbé Pierre was covered up.
Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort said Jan. 17 that he had asked the Paris prosecutor’s office to examine suspicions that people were aware of sexual abuse allegations against Abbé Pierre, but failed to report them to the authorities. Failure to report a serious offense can be a crime in France.
Archbishop Moulins-Beaufort’s announcement came days after a report presented nine new testimonies of alleged abuse by Abbé Pierre, who founded the Emmaus charity in 1949 and was regularly voted France’s most popular personality before his death in 2007, at the age of 94.
The nine testimonies, which included an allegation of “a penetrative sexual act on an underage boy,” follow seven made public in July 2024, and 17 published in September 2024. The 33 testimonies, which concern 57 potential victims, relate to alleged incidents from the 1950s to the 2000s.
A Jan. 17 bishops’ conference press release noted that the French bishops opened their archives on Abbé Pierre decades ahead of schedule last September and Emmaus is establishing a study commission.
But the bishops’ conference said the justice system alone had “the necessary means of investigation to ensure that the whole truth is told about the silence and failure to denounce which may have benefited Abbé Pierre.”
“This is why the bishops’ conference president has filed a report with the Paris public prosecutor for failure to report rape and sexual assault of vulnerable persons and minors,” it said.
“This is so that the public prosecutor’s office can assess whether it would be appropriate to open an investigation to determine the conditions under which the events mentioned may not have been reported to the courts for all these years.”
French media have reported that documents in the Church’s national archives show concerns were raised about Abbé Pierre’s behavior as early as 1942, four years after his priestly ordination.
Henri Grouès, the future Abbé Pierre, was born in 1912 to a prosperous family in Lyon, southeastern France. He entered the Capuchin order in 1931 and was ordained a priest in 1938. He was permitted to leave the order a year later and was incardinated in the Diocese of Grenoble.
He was active in the resistance following the Nazi German invasion of France in 1940, helping Jews and politically persecuted people to escape to Switzerland.
After the Second World War, he served as a member of the French parliament before founding Emmaus.
Abbé Pierre gained international prominence in 1954 when he made an appeal, broadcast on radio, calling on the French authorities to solve the country’s acute housing shortage. The appeal resonated with the French public, raising 500 million francs.
Today, Emmaus International has 425 member associations in 41 countries.
Abbé Pierre topped an annual poll of France’s favorite personalities more than a dozen times, but was frequently engulfed in controversy. He supported married priests, women’s ordination, contraception, and same-sex adoption.
In the 2005 book “My God ... Why?”, he admitted to breaking his vow of celibacy.
He said: “I took a vow of chastity that didn’t take away the power of desire and it has happened that I have given in to this in a transient way. But I have never had regular liaisons because I never let sexual desire take root.”
“I felt that to be fully satisfied, sexual desire had to be expressed in a loving, tender, and confident relationship while such a relationship was closed to me because of the choice I had made in life.”
His reputation began to unravel in July 2024, when a report commissioned by Emmaus International, Emmaus France, and the Abbé Pierre Foundation said he had been accused of sexual assault and harassment by at least seven women, including one who was a minor when the first incident allegedly occurred.
French authorities began removing his name and statues from public places. The Abbé Pierre Foundation plans to change its name.
Abbé Pierre is the latest prominent figure within French Catholicism to face posthumous accusations of sexual misconduct.
Others include Fr. Georges Finet, co-founder of the Foyers de Charité, Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, founder of the Community of St. John, and Jean Vanier, a Canadian who founded the L’Arche community in France.
The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) estimated in 2021 that as many as 330,000 children were abused from 1950 to 2020 in the French Catholic Church.
In response, the French bishops promised to undertake “a vast program of renewal” of their governance practices.
Now if we could just get the American authorities to authorize a similar study on McCarrick we here in the US might get a functional from top to bottom Church.
Sad to read about. I want the accusations to be fake, but considering the volume an investigation is warranted.