After the accusations of sexual assault against Abbé Pierre, the mayor of Courbevoie submitted to a vote on Monday evening to the municipal council, the removal of the name of the founder of Emmaüs from the square in front of the Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul church. The new name will be Abbot Pierre Hébert, behind the construction of the Courbevoie church.
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Five minutes. This is the time it took the elected officials of Courbevoie to vote to change the name of Abbé Pierre’s square, the religious being now described, 17 years after his death, as a sexual predator. Since July, the former favorite personality of the French has been targeted by accusations of sexual violence committed between the 1950s and 2000s.
The decision to rename the square was necessary in the face of these accusations, believes the city’s LR mayor Jacques Kossowski. “When I heard this, I thought of the women who have been attacked, he explains. What he did still helped a lot. But it was intolerable for me to leave that name.”
To perpetuate the cause of homelessness, the plaque in the name of Abbé Pierre will be transformed to recall the appeal of February 1, 1954 which was written in Courbevoie. “We cannot leave the face and name of a person in public space when there are such serious facts, comments a municipal councilor. But Abbé Pierre is a social marker. We must pay tribute to everything he did, to his founding of Emmaus, to all these companions who work every day for the most fragile.”
Especially since the fight is still ongoing. “I think that today we don’t talk enough about poverty, deplores the elected official. Today, people hide, are ashamed, go to the municipal social action center. It’s important to talk about these homeless people.”
The square will now bear the name of Abbé Pierre Hébert, the first priest of Courbevoie, guillotined in 1794. Several towns have already taken steps to remove the image of Abbé Pierre, such as renaming public places or even demolishing them. statues.