Abbé Pierre, a late French priest celebrated for his work with the poor, has been accused of sexually assaulting several women, one of them underage, two charities he founded said on Wednesday, July 17.
"Our organizations celebrate the courage of the people who have given testimony and, through their words, allowed these facts to come to light. We believe them," the organizations said in a joint statement about Henri Grouès, known as "Abbé Pierre" (Abbott Pierre), who died in 2007 aged 94.
The allegations are detailed in an independent report commissioned by the charities after a first claim that Abbé Pierre assaulted a woman.
"This work meant the testimonies of seven women could be gathered, attesting to behavior that could be interpreted as sexual assault or sexual harassment," between 1970 and 2005, the charities said. One of the women "was underage at the time of the events," they added. A source at Emmaüs told AFP that no criminal complaint has so far been filed.
The bishop's conference of France's Catholic Church professed "deep compassion and shame that such acts could be committed by a priest" in a post to X.
Some 17 years after his death, Abbé Pierre's gaunt, bearded features remain a familiar sight in posters in charity shops and in metro stations urging French citizens to think of the poor. He gave his inheritance away aged 18 to join the order of Capuchin monks, later becoming active in the Resistance to Nazi occupation and spending several post-war years as a member of parliament.
In 1949, he founded the Emmaüs community that preaches self-help for excluded people, and which has since spread to dozens of countries. He was also a backer of the "Restos du Cœur" soup kitchens movement and attacked city governments for failing to lodge the homeless.