That the Church has protected predatory priests, even in contemporary times, is no longer a matter of dispute. From the Preynat affair, a Lyon priest who was convicted of sexual assault on minors in 2020; to that of the Philippe brothers, two Dominican clerics who were accused of multiple acts of sexual violence; and the revelations of the independent commission on sexual abuse in the Church in 2021; there are many illustrations of the omerta maintained by the Catholic Church regarding the sexual crimes committed by its clerics. But was this omerta maintained? Who was involved? What were the methods? The archives of the French episcopate concerning Henri Grouès, known as Abbé Pierre, a famous French priest ordained in 1938, partly lift the veil surrounding these questions.

Following the September 6 publication by Emmaüs, a solidarity movement founded by Abbé Pierre to combat poverty, isolation and homelessness, of a second report accusing him of sexual violence (24 women, in total, testified to rape or assault, including three minors at the time of the events), the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF) opened its national archives, located in the southwestern Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, on September 13. There, it made a file, compiled by its teams of archivists, of documents – mostly letters – concerning the priest, who died in 2007, available to journalists and researchers. Two weeks later, on Thursday, September 26, it was the turn of the diocese of Grenoble, where Grouès had been ordained priest, to open its archives: Not only those of the diocese, but also those attached to the bishop – an important distinction since documents relating to the sexual affairs of clerics fall into the second category.

Le Monde consulted these documents. They illustrate the church hierarchy's gradual awareness of the need to supervise this unusual priest. As early as 1942, when Grouès was working as an auxiliary (in charge, among other things, of religious education) at the orphanage in La Côte-Saint-André at the foot of the French Alps, an archpriest in charge of supervising him complained to the bishop of nearby Grenoble, Alexandre Caillot, about his "elusive character, evading all control." "His zeal, piety and virtue are indisputable, but spoiled by a lack of common sense, by imprudence and great vanity, for he always believes himself called to extraordinary and grandiose things (...) It is necessary that he leave as soon as possible," wrote the priest, who threatened to resign if Grouès remained in post, in a letter preserved in Grenoble.

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