Revelations about Abbé Pierre, long a favourite personality of the French, have been coming one after the other since 17 July and the publication of an independent report in which seven women confided that they had been victims of sexual assault since the 1970s. Since then, around ten new reports have been made.
But according to documents consulted by Releasethe sexual violence committed by Henri Grouès – the priest’s real name – is said to have begun in 1955, a few months after his call for solidarity in the winter of 1954.
Letters revealing the behavior of Abbé Pierre
According to correspondence between Marshall Suther, an American student who accompanied Henri Grouès to the United States in 1955, and Emmaüs officials at the time, the first complaints from women about the priest’s behavior were reported in May of that year.
The notebooks, a sort of “personal diary” of the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, a professor at Princeton who set up the abbot’s overseas operation, reveal that he was alerted in May 1955 that two women from New York were complaining about Henri Grouès’ behavior towards them. Cardinal Spelmann and Cardinal Samuel Stritch were also reportedly notified.
Avoiding scandal
Still according to Releasethe solution found to avoid the scandal is to cut short Abbé Pierre because his behavior does not stop in New York. Other incidents take place in Chicago and Washington. The notes of the Catholic philosopher indicate that he proposes a direct return from Chicago to Paris during a telephone call with his student, Marshall.
The matter seemed serious enough across the Atlantic for an American Jesuit to advise the Princeton professor to meet with Cardinal Spellman to warn the Archbishop of Paris that Abbé Pierre would not return to the United States.
In the summer of 1955, upon his return to France, Jacques Maritain alerted the Catholic authorities, with the help of René Voillaume, one of his spiritual advisors. At the beginning of September, Henri Grouès had to explain himself to the Archbishopric of Paris. Two years later, in 1957, a “socius”, both chaperone and spiritual advisor, was assigned by the Catholic authorities to Abbé Pierre while the latter was undergoing treatment in clinics and spiritual retreats, then internment in Switzerland in 1958. Henri Grouès was then removed from the leadership of the Emmaüs movement.
Other scandals abroad
Nothing has been leaked from this case in the United States. “The decision that the policy of silence was the best for the moment was based precisely on this desire to protect [des] “fundamental goals,” wrote student Marshall on March 23, 1956, to one of the Emmaus officials, transcribed by Release.
And on other scandals abroad, either. Because Abbé Pierre would also have made headlines for the same facts elsewhere, such as in Quebec. Theologian André Paul, author of Peasant from the right bank, published by Editions du Cerf, reminds the national newspaper that in 1964, a Canadian priest had confided that the priest had “been exfiltrated, the previous year, after an agreement between the police and the ecclesiastical authorities because of his conduct with women.”