How to continue its action and maintain meaning, in the face of scandal? Volunteers, employees, Emmaüs companions have all been disconcerted since the revelations about the sexual assaults committed by Abbé Pierre for 50 years. All over France, the movement is questioning itself and sometimes already reacting, by removing here and there the symbols bearing the image of the founder of Emmaüs.
In Sarthe, in La Milesse, very close to Le Mans, a crisis meeting was held on Tuesday, September 17 with a large part of the community to discuss the future together. The room is full. It is 9 o’clock. There are cups of coffee, madeleines and nearly 100 people have been brought together by Michel Lopez, the president of Emmaüs in Sarthe. Volunteers, employees, and the fifty or so companions living in this community. For an hour, the microphone will be rolling.
Pascal, 60, has been a companion of the historic Emmaüs here for 24 years. He is the first to express his disgust. “Abbé Pierre, for the elders, was an icon. But he is no longer an icon at all, he claims. He’s a rotten bastard! And all the media, they have to fight again, they have to continue their work, because there are too many victims everywhere in the world, women and children. That’s all I have to say.”
:quality(50)/2024/09/18/20240917-102105-66ea658d08ccf186562961.jpg)
The national leaders of the movement knew about it as early as 1955. Why didn’t they say anything, several volunteers ask indignantly. “When I joined Emmaüs in 1977, all of this was already going on, says a woman. What I deplore is that the leaders of Emmaüs France and International are the guilty ones, as well as the Church. By remaining silent, they allowed sex toys to be given to Abbé Pierre.”
“We have a duty to challenge our leaders and hold them to account, that’s clear, answers Michel Lopez. I feel like, in 14 years of associative activism, I’ve been led up the garden path, deceived about the character. It reminds us that we can’t deify someone. Emmaüs is not that! It’s the volunteers, the people, it’s everyone.”
Sometimes the words of the debate are discussed. “We all loved him! And then we discover that he is a man like any other, who had his faults,” estimates a volunteer. “Being a sexual predator is not a ‘flaw'”corrects another. In the community library here, the dozens of books signed by Abbé Pierre have already left the shelves, stored in boxes. A volunteer wonders: should we do the same in the Emmaüs shop? “Yes, because there is Abbé Pierre, but among the books we sell, there are many.”
“What do we do? Should we remove PPDA’s books? Gauguin?”
An Emmaüs volunteerduring exchanges within the movement
And what, above all, should be done with the heritage and principles of Emmaus? “‘Whoever you are, come in, sleep, eat, regain hope. Here, we love you’. This is a phrase from Abbé Pierre. We can’t take it away from him! But that doesn’t excuse anything,” says a volunteer. “Ah no, I’m not saying that that excuses, another answers. But we must not take away from him what he did and what made Emmaüs exist. Because poverty does not wait either.”
“Isn’t this where we should remove the name Emmaüs?”says a speaker. “Ah no, that would be a mistake, Emmaüs is a path,” argues another. Keep the name of the movement, but erase the face of Abbé Pierre on the immense fresco – eight meters high by 32 meters wide – which decorates the hangar in Le Mans. “Regarding the removal of the mural, who votes for it?” By a show of hands, the community decided by a large majority to get rid of it.
:quality(50)/2024/09/18/20240917-112904-66ea69ad2b95b816746364.jpg)
But some are worried about the consequences this could have, especially some of the most recent companions. They are often people without means, and without papers, like Diane, a Gabonese woman who has been living in this Emmaüs community for five months, and for whom the appeal launched by Abbé Pierre in the winter of 1954, 70 years ago, is still relevant. “His message was strong because people like me, winter and summer, staying to sleep in the street is scary,” she estimates.
“I was worried that if they found bad things when they searched and we closed the movement, we would end up on the street, because this is where we live!”
Diane, companion of Emmaus in Sartheto franceinfo
So the managers of the Sarthe site were able to reassure Diane: there is no question of calling this welcome into question, nor of ending the Emmaüs movement. Simply of getting rid of the figure of its founder.
Because President Michel Lopez is deeply disgusted when he thinks back on this last trip, to Normandy, to Esteville, where Abbé Pierre lived and is buried. The community of Le Mans had gone there only a few days before the revelations. “I remember this visit to Abbé Pierre’s room with the companions discovering his daily environment, the emotion perceptible in this discovery, he says. And the most striking image is that of this companion who had bought a rose with his own money, placing it on her grave. We were all moved! The fall is brutal.”
To absorb the shock, the national leaders of Emmaüs will start a tour of France, in all the regions, so that each member of the movement, as in this meeting in Sarthe, can express themselves.