The Church is gradually emerging from its silence on the subject of Abbot Pierre. By revealing its archives in France, the institution shows how, at the end of the 1950s, the episcopal hierarchy kept silent about behavior deemed “problematic” but never named.
It is a cardboard file a few centimeters thick that researchers and journalists can consult at the headquarters of the archives of the Catholic Church, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. Faced with the emotion caused by the revelations of sexual assault committed by Abbot Pierre, the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) opened access to the documents in mid-September, without waiting for the deadline of seventy-five years after its died in 2007.
“At least some bishops” were aware
The 216 documents in the file, combining typed letters and handwritten letters, complete what the president of the CEF Eric de Moulins-Beaufort affirmed on September 16: “At least a few bishops” were aware “as early as 1955-1957” of the “serious behavior » of Abbé Pierre “with regard to women”. However, nowhere in these archives is the exact nature of the acts specified. The letters speak of “accidents”, “moral miseries”, “reprehensible acts”, “abnormal states”… It is difficult to understand if these periphrases hide consensual relationships, but proscribed by the Church, or sexual assaults. , as accused by around twenty women, some of whom were minors at the time of the events.
The most explicit document, a letter of November 13, 1964 perhaps emanating from the general secretary of the episcopate, summarizes the affair by speaking of a “severely mentally ill person” subject to “loss of all self-control, notably after successful books” and assures that “young girls have been marked for life”. Abbé Pierre, whose real name is Henri Grouès, acted “without it being possible to catch him in the act”, adds this photocopied and almost illegible document.
What did the Vatican know?
The fear of scandal is recurring, coupled with a concern about the media stature of Abbé Pierre, a resistance fighter during the war, elected deputy for Meurthe-et-Moselle at the Liberation, and crowned by his action for the homeless. housed during the winter of 1954. In March 1958, the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops (ACA) expressed “its concern at seeing so many journalists approach it”. “Is it appropriate that his person be thus displayed, enlarged? », asked the bishop of Besançon in 1959, incredulously.
How far has the information spread? Pope Francis affirmed in mid-September that the Vatican was aware, at least since his death in 2007, of the accusations of sexual violence. In January 1959, however, the apostolic nunciature wrote to Jean-Marie Villot to convey the message that “the Holy See orders Mr. Abbot Pierre to immediately suspend the trip he intends to make to the Canada.”