Why is the icon only falling from its pedestal today? Why is Abbé Pierre’s behavior towards women only revealed to the world seventeen long years after his death, when his inclinations had already been detected within the Church in the 1950s? After the broadcast on September 6 of 17 new testimonies accusing Henri Grouès of sexual assaults committed between 1951 and 2006, which are added to the seven already revealed in July, the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) announced this Thursday that, “in view of the seriousness of the successive revelations”, it was immediately opening its archives for consultation for documents relating to Abbé Pierre. What do we know about these documents? What light can they shed? What did we already know?
20 Minutes takes stock of this new aspect of the “Abbé Pierre affair”.
Why is this “opening” of the archives exceptional?
The documents concerned are those kept at the National Center for Archives of the Church of France (CNAEF), based in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the Paris region. They could not have been officially consulted until 2082. Because, according to the regulations of the place, “the duration of communicability […] is usually 75 years after the death of the priest or religious person in question.
But be careful, this premature opening, “to allow all the light to be shed”, is only intended for “authorized persons”: firstly the experts of the commission of inquiry launched by Emmaüs, then the researchers and journalists. After processing the requests – numerous already this Thursday – the documents will only be able to be consulted “physically”, on site.
What documents are these?
In a long interview given this Thursday to theChristian radio RCFBishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the president of the CEF, speaks of “a fairly thin file in which there are a few letters which show, indeed, that the central office of what was called at the time the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops of France, became aware of the behavior of Abbé Pierre”. “There is an element on the fact that he left for Switzerland but no details on what happened there and I think that’s about it”, he adds. The Archbishop of Reims is referring here to the decision, taken in 1957, both by Emmaüs and the clerical authorities, to send Abbé Pierre to a Swiss psychiatric clinic. Officially, for health reasons, but we now know that it was a matter of isolating him after a long trip to the United States, marked by many escapades.
Also in the 1950s, Abbé Pierre was targeted by a “contra sextum”, a notion of canon law to highlight a breach of chastity. He was also accompanied by a “socius”, a companion who was supposed to assist him but above all to monitor him.
The CNAEF surely contains written traces of these provisions.
What did the Church know?
In July, in a tribune of the World – entitled “the sexual compulsion of the Catholic cleric appears indubitable” – four researchers from the sociohistorical team of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), before which the first victim of Abbé Pierre made herself known, show that the Swiss episode was known to researchers, including thanks to documents from the CNAEF.
Another piece of information shows even more clearly that the Catholic hierarchy was aware, almost from the start, of the priest’s deviations. This is a letter written in 1958 by the Archbishop of Paris and revealed by the investigation unit of Radio FranceCardinal Feltin takes up his pen to dissuade the Minister of Civil Service from decorating Abbé Pierre on the grounds that “the person concerned is seriously ill.”
A Capuchin monk from 1931 to 1937, Henri Grouès depended during this period on his order, then on the diocese of Grenoble once he was ordained a priest. In its report of September 6, the Egaé firm commissioned by Emmaüs, reproduced a letter from “Y.”, written in 2005. In it, she recounts having been subjected to a forced kiss and touching in March 1981 during a book signing session in Belgium. This letter addressed to the Capuchin order was also found in the archives of the diocese of Grenoble.
What lessons for the institution?
“Some bishops knew, that’s for sure, a certain number of facts,” acknowledges Mgr de Moulins-Beaufort, still on RCF, recalling that no bishop in office today “was more than 10 years old at the time.” So why didn’t these elements resurface earlier? The president of the CEF puts forward two explanations. “He did not live in an ecclesial framework […] Already at that time, after the appeal of the winter of 54, he was devoted to his work, he lived with people from the street with the different companions he welcomed,” he emphasizes, assuming that the Emmaüs archives will necessarily be more enlightening. The Archbishop of Reims also notes that the polar figure of Abbé Pierre “only reemerged in the 1990s-2000s.”
Our file on Abbé Pierre, here
Time to forget everything? “For us today, the will – and we are working on this – [est] that when sanctions are taken against someone, the memory of them can be preserved. I think that, without doubt, the weakness of what was put in place around Abbé Pierre is that it remained relatively confidential, it was known to few people in reality, which means that when these people disappeared or left office, well we forgot about it a little,” he confesses.