"I hereby reaffirm the work of the Church in France to ensure that the truth is told about the facts of sexual assault and violence [...]. I call on all other institutions and organizations to do the same. We owe it to the victims," wrote Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French Bishops' Conference (CEF), on Monday, September 16, in an op-ed on Abbé Pierre published in Le Monde (in French). A few days earlier, he had announced the opening to journalists and researchers of episcopal archives concerning the famous priest who founded the French charity Emmaüs, who is now accused of sexual abuse.

The documents (mainly letters sent or received by prelates) consulted by Le Monde bear witness to a gradual awareness, from the 1950s onwards, of deviant behavior on the part of Abbé Pierre – even if it was never really qualified as such – and of the determination of the French episcopate to avoid its revelation at all costs. But the archives also suggest that the secret was kept beyond the ecclesiastical sphere.

His "sickness," his "numerous accidents of a moral nature": "All this was of great concern to Emmaüs leaders, who did not wish to see the founder return," wrote Jean-Marie Villot, then Secretary General of the Assembly of French Cardinals and Archbishops (forerunner of the CEF) to the Archbishop of Besançon, in 1958, shortly after Abbé Pierre's internment in a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland – an internment decided by mutual agreement with Emmaüs.

What exactly did the Emmaüs managers know? At what time? Church archives don't tell us. As for the Emmaüs archives, kept at the Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail in Roubaix, northern France, they represent some 330 linear meters with, on the one hand, Abbé Pierre's personal archives and, on the other, those of the organization. The latter "have been much less explored," according to Adrien Chaboche, delegate general of Emmaüs International, beneficiary of both funds.

'A major clean-up'

"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. And there are huge gaps, whole months are missing," historian Axelle Brodiez-Dolino, who consulted them for her book Emmaüs et l'abbé Pierre ("Emmaüs and Abbé Pierre"), told Le Monde. Today, she suspects that Emmaüs's teams carried out "a major clean-up in the 1950s; everything was methodically purged." Chaboche said he couldn't confirm nor deny these suspicions.

In early September, when Emmaüs made public new accusations of sexual assault against Abbé Pierre, it announced the forthcoming appointment of a commission of independent experts to shed light on past wrongdoings. This commission will have full access to the archives, including the 4% of sensitive or intimate documents that require the prior agreement of Emmaüs International. "We are committed to communicating any document related to the violence committed by Abbé Pierre, subject to the protection of the privacy of those concerned, especially potential victims," promised Chaboche.

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