Sexual Abuse Allegations Shatter a Crusading Priest’s Legacy
The New York Times
Abbé Pierre campaigned for decades against homelessness and poverty. Revelations about his treatment of women have destroyed his image as a symbol of virtue in France.
Abbé Pierre, a Roman Catholic priest who crusaded against homelessness in France, is such a celebrated figure in the country that television viewers once voted him the third-greatest French person of all time. Streets, schools and public parks are named for him. He was seen as a steady moral compass for the nation, even after he died at age 94 in 2007.
But over the past two months a much darker image has emerged: that of an accused sexual predator.
Years after his death, Abbé Pierre is facing a sudden profusion of sexual harassment and assault accusations — a stunning fall from grace that has prompted soul-searching at the social justice movement he started; raised uncomfortable questions about who knew about his behavior toward women; and unsettled a country that once hailed him as a symbol of virtue.
“The image of purity, of solidarity, of empathy that he had is crumbling,” said Axelle Brodiez-Dolino, a historian at France’s National Center for Scientific Research who has written a book about Abbé Pierre and Emmaüs, one of the nonprofit organizations that grew out of the movement he founded to address poverty and homelessness.
“That doesn’t change the good that he did in the past,” she added. “But there was a dark side to him that the broader public was completely unaware of.”
Two reports, commissioned by the nonprofits and published in July and this month, have laid bare accusations that Abbé Pierre sexually harassed or assaulted at least two dozen women between the 1950s and the 2000s, mostly in France but sometimes abroad, including in the United States. The accusations have been made by the women themselves, by members of their families, or by witnesses.
